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MEN OF OUR TIMES; 



OR 



LEADING PATRIOTS OF THE DAY. 



BEING NARRATIVES OF THE LIVES AND DEEDS OP 



Statesmen, Generals, and Orators. 



INCLUDING 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES 



LINCOLN, GRANT, GARRISON, SUMNER, CHASE, WILSON, GREELEY, 
FARRAGUT, ANDREW, COLFAX, STANTON, DOUGLASS, 
BUCKINGHAM, SHERMAN, SHERIDAN, HOW- 
ARD, PHILLIPS AND BEECHER. 



BY 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, 

AUTHOR OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. 



BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED 



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PUBLISHED BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY 

HARTFORD PUBLISHING CO., HARTFOjRD,- 

J. D. DENISON, NEW YORK ; J. A. STODDARD, OfflTCA JO, 

18 68. .-,; 
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to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by 
*T935flKIET BEECHER STOJVE, 



in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the District 
of Connecticut. 



Electrotyped by 
LOCKWOOD & MAXDEVILLE, 

HARTFORD, CONS. 



DEDICATION. 



THESE RECORDS 

OF THEIR ELDER BRETHREN IN THE REPUBLIC, 

ARE INSCRIBED 

BY THE AUTHOR. 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIOlSrS. 



PAGE. 



1. President Lincoln, - - - frontispiece. 

2. Gen. U. S. Grant, HI 

3. "William L. Garrison, - 154 

4. Charles Sumner, - - - - -214 

5. Salmon P. Chase, - 241 

6. Henry Wilson, - - - - - 269 

7. Horace Greeley, - 293 

8. Com. D. G. Farragut, - - - - 311 

9. Gov. John A. Andrew, - 325 

10. Schuyler Colfax, - - - - - 347 

11. E. M. Stanton, - - - - - 363 

12. Frederick Douglass, ... - 380 

13. Gen. P. H. Sheridan, 405 

14. Gen. W. T. Sherman, - - - - 423 

15. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, - - - 447 
10. Gov. Wm. A. Buckingham, - - - - 463 

17. Wendell Phillips, - 483 

18. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, 



505 



PBEFACE. 



In these sketches of some of the leading public men of our times, 
the editor professes to give such particulars of their lives, and such 
only, as the public have a right to know. 

Every such man has two lives, his public and his private one. 
The one becomes fairly the property of the public, in virtue of his 
having been connected with events in which every one has a share 
of interest ; but the other belongs exclusively to himself, his family, 
and his intimate friends, and the public have no more right to discuss 
or pry into its details than they have into those of any other private 
individual. 

The editor has aimed to avoid all privacies and personalities which 
might be indelicate in relation to family circles. She has indeed, in 
regard to all the characters, so far as possible, dwelt upon the 
early family and community influences by which they were formed, 
particularly upon the character and influence of mothers ; but such 
inquiries relate for the most part to those long dead, and whose mor- 
tal history has become a thing of the past. 

Whenever the means have been at hand, the family stock from 
which each man has been derived, has been minutely traced. The 
question of inherited traits is becoming yearly one of increasing in- 
terest, and most striking results come from a comparison of facts 
upon this subject. The fusion of different races is said to produce 
marked results on the characteristics of the human being. America 
has been a great smelting furnace in which tribes and nations have 
been melted together, and the result ought to be some new develop- 
ments of human nature. It will always be both interesting and 
useful to know both the quality of the family stock, and the circum- 
stances of the early training of men who have acted any remarkable 
part in life. 



VI PREFACE. 

Our country has recently passed through a great crisis which has 
concentrated upon it for a time the attention of the civilized world. 
It has sustained a shock which the whole world, judging by past 
experience, said must inevitably shatter the republic to fragments, 
and yet, like a gallant ship in full sail, it has run down the terrible 
obstacle, and gone on triumphant, and is this day stronger for the 
collision. 

This wonderful success is owing to the character of the people 
which a Christian Democracy breeds. Of this people we propose to 
give a specimen; to show how they were formed in early life, from 
the influences which are inherent in such a state. 

We are proud and happy to know that these names on our list are 
after all but specimens. Probably every reader of this book will 
recall as many more whom he will deem equally worthy of public 
notice. There is scarcely one of them who would not say in refer- 
ence to his position before the public, what Lincoln said: "I stand 
where I do because some man must stand there, but there are twenty 
others that might as well have been leaders as myself." On the 
whole, we are not ashamed to present to the world this list of men 
as a specimen of the graduates from the American school of Chris- 
tian Democracy. 

So far as we know, the American government is the only perma- 
nent republic which ever based itself upon the principles laid down 
by Jesus Christ, of the absolute equal brotherhood of man, and the 
rights of man on the simple ground of manhood. Notwithstanding 
the contrary practices of a section of the States united in the Union, 
and the concessions which they introduced into the constitution, no- 
body doubts that this was the leading idea of the men who founded 
our government. The declaration of American Independence crys- 
talized a religious teaching within a political act. The constitution 
of the United States still further elaborates these principles, and so 
strong was the logic of ideas that the conflict of opinions implied in 
the incidental concessions to opposite ideas, produced in the govern- 
ment of the country a continual and irrepressible discord. For a 
while it seemed doubtful which idea would triumph, and whether the 
accidental parasite would not strangle and wither the great original 
tree. The late war was the outcome of the whole. The fierce fire 
into which our national character has been cast in the hour of trial, 



PREFACE. Vll 

has burned out of it the last lingering stain of compromise with any- 
thing inconsistent with its primary object, "to ordain justice and 
perpetuate liberty." 

These men have all been formed by the principles of that great 
Christian document, and that state of society and those social influ- 
ences which grew out of it, and it is instructive to watch, in their 
early life, how a Christian republic trains her sons. 

In looking through the list it will be seen that almost every one 
of these men sprang from a condition of hard-working poverty. The 
majority of them were self-educated men, who in early life were 
inured to industrious toil. The farm life of America has been the 
nursery of great men, and there is scarce a man mentioned in the 
book who has not hardened his muscles and strengthened his brain 
power by a hand to hand wrestle with the forces of nature in agri- 
cultural life. Frugality, strict temperance, self-reliance and indomi- 
table industry have been the lessons of their early days. 

Some facts about these specimen citizens are worthy of attention. 
More than one-half of them were born and received their early train- 
ing in New England, and full one-third are direct lineal descendants 
of the Pilgrim fathers. All, so far as we know, are undoubted be- 
lievers in the Christian religion — the greater proportion of them are 
men of peculiarly and strongly religious natures, who have been 
active and efficient in every peculiarly religious work. All have been 
agreed in one belief, that the teachings of Jesus Christ are to be car- 
ried out in political institutions, and that the form of society based 
on his teachings, is to be defended at any sacrifice and at all risks. 

There is scarcely a political man upon this list whose early efforts 
were not menaced with loss and reproach and utter failure, if he 
advocated these principles in the conduct of political affairs. For 
these principles they have temporarily suffered bufferings, oppres- 
sions, losses, persecutions, and in one great instance, Death. All of 
them honored liberty when she was hard beset, insulted and traduced, 
and it is fit that a free people should honor them in the hour of her 
victory. 

It will be found when the sum of all these biographies is added up 
that the qualities which have won this great physical and moral vic- 
tory have not been so much exceptional gifts of genius or culture, as 
those more attainable ones which belong to man's moral nature. 



Viii PREFACE. 

Taken as a class, while there is a fair proportion both of genius 
and scholarship among them, yet the general result speaks more of 
average talent and education turned to excellent account, than of any 
striking eminence in any particular direction. 

But we regard it as highest of all that they were men of good and 
honest hearts — men who have set their faces as a flint to know and 
do the right. All of them are men whose principles have been 
tried in the fire, men who have braved opposition and persecution 
and loss for the sake of what they believed to be true, and knew to 
be right, and for this even more than for their bravery in facing dan- 
ger, and their patience and perseverance in overcoming difficulties, 
we have good hope in offering them as examples to the young men 
of America. 

In respect to one of the names on the list, the editor's near relation- 
ship, while it gives her most authentic access to all sources of just 
information, may be held to require an apology. But the fashion of 
writing biographies of our leading men is becoming so popular that 
the only way in which a prominent man can protect himself from 
being put before the public by any hands who may think fit to assume 
the task, is to put into the hands of some friend such authentic par- 
ticulars as may with propriety be recorded. Mr. Beecher has re- 
cently been much embarrassed by the solicitation of parties, who not- 
withstanding his remonstrances, announce an intention of writing his 
life. He has been informed by them that it was to be done whether 
he consented or not, and that his only choice was between furnishing 
these parties with material, or taking the risk of what they might 
discover in their unassisted researches. 

In this dilemma, it is hoped that the sketch presented in this vol- 
ume, as being undeniably authentic, may so satisfy the demand, that 
there may be no call for any other record. 

H. B. STOWE. 

Hartford, January, 1868. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I.— ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
The Men of our Time — Lincoln Foremost — The War was the Working-Man's 
Revolution — Abraham Lincoln's Birth and Youth — The Books he Read — 
The Thirty Thousand Dollars for Tender— The Old Stocking of Govern- 
ment Money — A Just Lawyer ; Anecdotes — His First Candidacy and Speech 
— Goes to Legislature and Congress — The Seven Debates and Campaign 
against Douglass in 1858 — Webster's and Lincoln's Language Compared — 
The Cooper Institute Speech — The Nomination at Chicago— Moral and 
Physical Courage — The Backwoodsman President and the Diplomatists — 
Significance of his Presidential Career — Religious Feelings — His Kindness 
— " The Baby Did It "—The First Inaugural— The Second Inaugural, and 
other State Papers — The Conspiracy and Assassination— The Opinions of 
Foreign Nations on Mr. Lincoln. - - - - - -11 

CHAPTER II.— ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

A General Wanted — A Short War Expected — The Young Napoleon — God's 
Revenge Against Slavery — The Silent Man in Galena — " Tanning Leath- 
er" — Gen. Grant's Puritan Descent — How he Loaded the Logs — His West 
Point Career— Service in Mexico — Marries, and Leaves the Army — Wood- 
cutting, Dunning and Leather-Selling — Enlists against the Rebellion — Mis- 
souri Campaign — Paducah Campaign — Fort Donelson Campaign — Battle 
of Shiloh — How Grant Lost his Temper — Vicksburg Campaign — Lincoln 
on Grant's "Drinking" — Chattanooga — Grant's Method of Making a Speech 
— Appointed Lieutenant-General — The Richmond Campaign — "Mr. Grant 
is a Very Obstinate Man " — Grant's Qualifications as a Ruler — Honesty — 
Generosity to Subordinates — Sound Judgment of Men — Power of Holding 
his Tongue — Grant's Sidewalk Platform — Talks Horse to Senator Wade — 
"Wants Nothing Said "—The Best Man for Next President. - - 111 

CHAPTER III.— WLLLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Mr. Garrison's Birth and Parents — His Mother — Her Conversion — His Boy- 
hood — Apprenticed to a Printer — First Anti-Slavery Address — Advice to 
Dr. Beecher — Benjamin Lundy — Garrison Goes to Baltimore — First Battle 
with Slavery — In Jail — First Number of the Liberator — Threats and Rage 
from the South — The American Anti-Slavery Society — First Visit to Eng- 
land—The Era of Mob Violence — The Respectable Boston Mob — Mr. Gar- 
rison's Account — Again in Jail — The Massachusetts Legislature Uncivil to 
the Abolitionists — Logical Vigor of the Slaveholders — Garrison's Disunion- 
ism — Denounces the Church— Liberality of the Liberator — The Southern- 
ers' own Testimony— Mr. Garrison's Bland Manners— His Steady Nerves— 



X CONTENTS 

His use of Language — Things by their Right Names — Abolitionist " Hard 
Language ;" Garrison's Argument on it — Protest for Woman's Eights — The 
Triumph of his Cause — " The Liberator " Discontinued — Second Visit to 
England — Letter to Mrs. Stowe. - - - - - 154 

CHAPTER IV.— CHARLES SUMNER. 
Mr. Sumner an instance of Free State High Culture — The "Brahmin Caste" 
of New England — The Sumner Ancestry ; a Kentish Family — Governor 
Increase Sumner; His Revolutionary Patriotism — His Stately Presence ; "A 
Governor that can Walk " — Charles Sumner's Father — Mr. Sumner's Edu- 
cation, Legal and Literary Studies — Tendency to Ideal Perfection — Sumner 
and the Whigs — Abolitionism Social Death — Sumner's Opposition to the 
Mexican War — His Peace Principles — Sumner Opposes Slavery Within the 
Constitution, as Garrison Outside of it — Anti-Slavery and the Whigs — The 
Political Abolitionist Platform — Webster asked in vain to Oppose Slavery 
— Sumner's Rebuke of Winthrop — Jbins tho Free Soil Party — Succeeds 
Webster in the Senate — Great Speech against the Fugitive Slave Law — The 
Constitution a Charter of Liberty — Slavery not in the Constitution — First 
Speech after the Brooks Assault — Consistency as to Reconstruction. - 214 

CHAPTER V.— SALMON P. CHASE. 
England and our Finances in the War — President Wheelock and Mr. Chase's 
Seven Uncles — His Uncle the Bishop — His Sense of Justice at College — His 
Uncle the Senator — Admitted to the Bar for Cincinnati — His First Argu- 
ment before a U.S. Court — Society in Cincinnati — The Ohio Abolitionists — 
Cincinnati on Slavery — The Church admits Slavery to be " an Evil " — Mr. 
Chase and the Birney Mob — The Case of the Slave Girl Matilda — How 
Mr. Chase "Ruined Himself" — He Affirms the Sectionality of Slavery — 
The Van Zandt Case — Extracts from Mr. Chase's Argument— Mi-. Chase 
in Anti-Slavery Politics — His Qualifications as a Financier. - - 241 

CHAPTER VI.— HENRY WILSON. 

Lincoln, Chase and Wilson as Illustrations of Democracy — Wilson's Birth 
and Boyhood — Reads over One Thousand Books in Ten Years — Learns 
Shocmaking— Earns an Education Twice Over— Forms a Debating Society 
— Makes Sixty Speeches for Harrison — Enters into Political Life on the 
Working-Men's Side— Helps to form the Free Soil Party— Chosen United 
States Senator over Edward Everett — Aristocratic Politics in those Days — 
Wilson and the Slaveholding Senators) — The Character of his Speaking — 
Full of Facts and Practical Sense — His Usefulness as Chairman of the 
Military Committee — His "History of the Anti-Slavery Measures in Con- 
gress"— The 37th and 38th Congresses— The Summary of Anti-Slavery 
Legislation from that Book — Other Abolitionist Forces — Contrast of Senti- 
ments of Slavery and of Freedom— Recognition of Hayti and Liberia ; 
Specimen of the Debate — Slave and Free Doctrine on Education— Equality 
in Washington Street Cars— Pro-Slavery Good Taste — Solon's Ideal of 
Democracy Reached in America. ------ 269 



CONTENTS. XI 

CHAPTEE VIL— HOEACE GEEELEY. 

The Scotch-Irish Eace in the United States — Mr. Greeley a Partly Eeversed 
Specimen of it — His Birth and Boyhood — Learns to Eead Books Upside 
Down — His Apprenticeship on a Newspaper — The Town Encyclopedia — 
His Industry at his Trade — His First Expei'icnce of a Fugitive Slave Chase 
His First Appearance in New York — The Work on the Polyglot Testament 
— Mr. Greeley as " The Ghost"— The First Cheap Daily Paper— The Firm 
of Greeley & Story — The New Yorker, the Jeffersonian and the Log Cahin 
— Mr. Greeley as Editor of the New Yorker — Beginning of The Tribune — 
Mr. Greeley's Theory of a Political Newspaper — His Love for The Tribune 
The First Week of that Paper — The Attack of the Sun and its Eesult — 
Mr. McElrath's Partnership — Mr. Greeley's Fourierism — " The Bloody 
Sixth — The Cooper Libel Suits — Mr. Greeley in Congress — He Goes to 
Em-ope — His Course in the Eebellion — His Ambition and Qualifications for 
Office — The Key-Note of his Character. ..... 293 

CHAPTEE VIII— DAVID G. FAEEAGUT. 

The Lesson of the Eebellion to Monarchs — The Strength of the United States 
— The U. S. Naval Service— The Last War— State of the Navy in 1861 — 
Admiral Farragut Eepresents the Old Navy and the New — Charlemagne's 
Physician, Farraguth — The Admiral's Letter aljout his Family — His Birth 
— His Cruise with Porter when a Boy of Nine — The Destruction of the Es- 
sex — Farragut in Peace Times — Expected to go Avith the South — Eefuses, 
is Tln-eatcned, and goes North — The Opening of the Mississippi — The Bay 
Fight at Mobile — The Admiral's Health — Farragut and the Tobacco Bish- 
op. - - - - - - - - - - 311 

CHAPTEE IX.— JOHN A. ANDEEW. 

Governor Andrew's Death Caused by the War — The Governors Dr. Beecher 
Prayed for — Governor Andrew a Christian Governor — Gov. Andrew's Birth 
— He goes to Boston to Study Law — Not Averse to unfashionable and Un- 
popular Causes — His Cheerfulness and Social Accomplishments — His Sun- 
day School Work — Lives Plainly — His Clear Foresight of the War — Sends 
a Thousand Men to Washington in One Day — The Story of the Blue 
Overcoats — The Telegram for the Bodies of the Dead of Baltimore — Gov. 
Andrew's Tender Care for the Poor — The British Minister and the Colored 
Women — The Governor's Eindness to the Soldier's Wife — His Biblical 
Proclamations — The Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1861 — The Proclama- 
tion of 1862 — His Interest in the Schools for the Eichmond Poor — Cotton 
Mather's Eulogy on Gov. Winthrop — Gov. Andrew's Farewell Address to 
the Massachusetts Legislature — State Gratitude to Gov. Andrew's Family. 325 

CHAPTEE X.— SCHUYLEE COLFAX. 

General William Colfax, Washington's Friend — Mr. Colfax his Grandson — 
Mr Colfax's Birth and Boyhood — Eemoves to Indiana — Becomes Deputy 
County Auditor — Begins to Deal with Politics— Becomes an Editor — The 



Xll CONTENTS. 

Period of Maximum Debt — Mr. Colfax's First Year — He is Burnt Out — 
His Subsequent Success as an Editor — His Political Career as a Whig — 
Joins the Republican Party — Popularity in his own District — The Nebraska 
Bill — Mr. Colfax goes into Congress — The Famous Contest for Speakership 
— Mr. Colfax Saves his Party from Defeat — Banks Chosen Speaker — Mr. 
Colfax's Great Speech on the Bogus Laws of Kansas — The Ball and Chain 
for Free Speech — Mr. Colfax Shows the Ball, and A. H. Stephens Holds 
it for him — Mr. Colfax Renominated Unanimously — His Remarkable Suc- 
cess in his own District — Useful Labors in Post Office Committee — Early 
for Lincoln for President — Mr. Colfax urged for Post Master General— His 
Usefulness as Speaker — The Qualifications for that Post — Mr. Colfax's Pub- 
lic Virtues. ....---- 347 

CHAPTER XL— EDWIN M. STANTON. 
Rebel Advantages at Opening of the War — They Knew all about the Army 
Officers — Early Contrast of Rebel Enthusiasm and Union Indifference — 
Importance of Mr. Stanton's Post — His Birth and Ancestry — His Educa- 
tion and Law Studies — County Attorney — State Reporter —Defends Mr". 
McNulty — Removes to Pittsburg — His Line of Business — The Wheeling 
Case — He Removes to Washington — His Qualifications as a Lawyer — He 
Enters Buchanan's Cabinet — His Unexpected Patriotism — His Own Ac- 
count of the Cabinet at News of Anderson's Move to Sumter — The Lion 
before the Old Red Dragon — Appointed Secretary of War — " Bricks in his 
Pockets " — Stanton's Habitual Reserve — His Wrath — " The Angel Gabriel 
as Paymaster" — Anecdotes of Lincoln's Confidence in Stanton — Lincoln's 
Affection for him — The Burdens of his Office — His Kindness of Heart 
within a Rough Outside — The Country his Debtor. ... 363 

CHAPTER XII.— FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 
The Opportunity for Every Man in a Republic — The Depth Below a White 
Man's Poverty — The Starting Point whence Fred Douglass Raised Himself 
— His Mother — Her Noble Traits — Her Self Denial for the sake of Seeing 
him — She Defends him against Aunt Katy — Her Death — Col. Loyd's Plant- 
ation — The Luxury of his own Mansion — The Organization of his Estate 
— " Old Master " — How they Punished the Women — How Young Douglass 
Philosophized on Being a Slave — Plantation Life — The Allowance of Food 
— The Clothes — An Average Plantation Day — Mr. Douglass' Experience 
as a Slave Child— The Slave Children's Trough— The Slave Child's 
Thoughts — The Melancholy of Slave Songs — He Becomes a House Ser- 
vant — A Kind Mistress Teaches him to Read — How he Completed his Ed- 
ucation — Effects of Learning to Read — Experiences Religion and Prays for 
Liberty — Learns to Write — Hires his Time, and Absconds — Becomes a 
Free Working-Man in New Bedford — Marries — Mr. Douglass on Garrison 
— Mr. Douglass' Literary Career. ------ 380 

CHAPTER XIIL— PHTLD? H. SHERIDAN. 

Sheridan a Full-Blooded Irishman — The Runaway Horse— Constitutional 
Fearlessness— Sheridan Goes to West Point — Sheridan's Apprenticeship to 



CONTENTS. Xlll 

War — The Fight with the Apaches at Fort Duncan — He is Transferred to 
Oregon — Commands at Fort Yamhill in the Yokima Reservation — The 
Quarrel among the Yokimas — Sheridan Popular with Indians — He Thinks 
he has a Chance to be Major Some Day — Sheridan's Shyness with Ladies 
— He Employs a Substitute in Waiting on a Lady — Sheridan's Kindness 
and Efficiency in Office Work — He Becomes a Colonel of Cavalry — His 
Shrewd Defeat of Gen. Chalmers — Becomes Brigadier — The Kentucky 
Campaign against Bragg — Sheridan Saves the Battle of Perrysville — Saves 
the Battle of Murfreesboro — Gen. Rousseau on Sheridan's Fighting — Sher- 
idan at Missionary Ridge — Joins Grant as Chief of Cavalry — His Raids 
around Lee — His Campaign in the Valley of Virginia — He Moves Across 
and Joins in the Final Operations — His Administration at New Orleans — 
Grant's Opinion of Sheridan. ...... 405 

CHAPTER XIV.— WLLLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

The Result of Eastern Blood and Western Developments — Lincoln, Grant, 
Chase and Sherman Specimens of it — The Sherman Family Character — 
Hon. Thomas Ewing adopts Sherman — Character of the Boy — He Enters 
West Point — His Peculiar Traits Showing thus Early — How he Treated 
his " Pleb " — His Early Military Service — His Appearance as First Lieu- 
tenant — Marries and Resigns — Banker at San Francisco — Superintendent 
of Louisiana Military Academy — His Noble Letter Resigning the Super- 
intendency — He Foresees a Great War — Cameron and Lincoln Think not 
— Sherman at Bull Run — He Goes to Kentucky — Wants Two Hundred 
Thousand Troops — The False Report of his Insanity — Joins Grant ; His 
Services at Shiloh — Services in the Vicksburg Campaigns — Endurance of 
Sherman and his Army — Sherman's estimate of Grant — How to live on the 
Enemy — Prepares to move from Atlanta — The Great March — His Courtesy 
to the Colored People — His Foresight in War— Sherman on OmceJJolding. 423 

CHAPTER XV.— OLIVER 0. HOWARD. 

Can there be a Christian Soldier? — General Howard's Birth — His Military 
Education — His Life Before the Rebellion — Resigns in Order to get into 
the Field — Made Brigadier for Good Conduct at Bull Run — Commands 
the Eleventh Corps and Joins the Army at Chattanooga — His Services in 
the Army of the Potomac — Extreme Calmness on the Field of Battle — 
Services with Sherman — Sherman's hisjh Opinion of him — Col. Bowman's 
Admiration of Howard's Christian Observances — Patriotic Services while 
Invalided at Home — Reproves the Swearing Teamster — Placed over the 
Freedmen's Bureau — The Central Historic Fact of the War — The Rise of 
Societies to Help the Freedmen — The Work of the Freedmen's Bureau — 
Disadvantages Encountered by it, and by General Howard — Results of the 
Bureau thus far — Col. Bowman's Description of Gen. Howard's Duties — 
Gen. Sherman's Letter to Gen. Howard on Assuming the Post — Estimate 
of Gen. Howard's Abilities. ...... 447 



XW CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XVI.— WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

The Buckinghams an Original Puritan Family — Rev. Thomas Buckingham . 
— Gov. Buckingham's Father and Mother — Lebanon, the Birthplace of 
Five Governors — Gov. Buckingham's Education — He Teaches School — His 
Natural Executive Tendency — His Business Career — His Extreme Punctu- 
ality in Payments — His Business and Religious Character — His Interest in 
the Churches and Schools — His Benefactions in those Directions — His Po- 
litical Course — He Accepts Municipal but not Legislative Offices — A Mem- 
ber of the Peace Conference — He Himself Equips the First State Militia in 
the "War — His Zealous Co-operation with the Government — Sends Gen. 
Aiken to Washington — The Isolation of that City from the North — Gov. 
Buckingham's Policy for the War; Letter to Mr. Lincoln — His Views on 
Emancipation ; Letter to Mr. Lincoln — Anecdote of the Temperance Gov- 
ernor's Staff. ........ 463 

CHAPTER XVII.— WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Birth and Ancestry of Wendell Phillips — His Education and Social Advan- 
tage — The Lovejoy Murder — Speech in Faneuil Hall — The Murder Justified 
— Mr. Phillips' First Speech — He Defends the Liberty of the Press — His 
Ideality — He Joins the Garrisonian Abolitionists — Gives up the Law and 
Becomes a Reformer — His Method and Style of Oratory — Abolitionists 
Blamed for the Boston Mob — Heroism of the Early Abolitionists — His Posi- 
tion in Favor of "Woman's Rights " — Anecdote of His Lecturing— His 
Services in the Cause of Temperance — Extract from His Argument on 
Prohibition — His Severity towards Human Nature — His Course During and 
Since the War — A Change of Tone Recommended. ... 483 

CHAPTER XVTII.— HENRY WARD BEECHER. s. 

Mr. Beecher a Younger Child — Death of his Mother — His Step-Mother's 
Religious Influence — Ma'am Kilboum's School — The Passing Bell — Un- 
profitable Schooling — An Inveterate School Joker — Masters the Latin 
Grammar — Goes to Amherst College — His Love of Flowers — Modes of 
Study; a Reformer — Mr. Beecher and the Solemn Tutor — His Favorite 
Poetry— His Introduction to Phrenology— His Mental Philosophy— Doc- 
trine of Spiritual Intuition — Punctuality for Joke's Sake— Old School and 
New School— Doubts on Entering the Ministry— Settlement at Lawrence- 
burg— His Studies ; First Revival— Large Accessions to the Church— 
" Tropical Style "—Ministerial Jokes— Slavery in the Pulpit— The Trans- 
fer to Brooklyn— Plymouth Church Preaching— Visit to England— Speech- 
es in England— Letters from England— Christian View of England— The 
Exeter Hall Speech— Preaches an Unpopular Forgiveness. - - 505 








-LC^ls^z/ 



OHAPTEK I. 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The Men of our Time — Lincoln Foremost — The "War was the "Working-Man's 
Revolution — Abraham Lincoln's Birth and Youth — The Books he read — 
The Thirty Thousand Dollars for Tender — The Old Stocking of Government 
Money — A Just Lawyer; Anecdotes — His First Candidacy and Speech — 
Goes to Legislature and Congress — The Seven Debates and Campaign against 
Douglas in 1858 — Webster's and Lincoln's Language Compared — The Cooper 
Institute Speech — The Nomination at Chicago — Moral and Physical Courage 
— The Backwoodsman President and the Diplomatists — Significance of his 
Presidential Career — Religious Feelings — His Kindness — " The Baby Did 
It " — The First Inaugural — The Second Inaugural, and other State Papers — 
The Conspiracy and Assassination — The Opinions of Foreign Nations on Mr. 
Lincoln. 

Our times have been marked from all other times 
as the scene of an immense conflict which has not 
only shaken to its foundation our own country, but 
has been felt like the throes of an earthquake through 
all the nations of the earth. 

Our own days have witnessed the closing of the 
great battle, but the preparations for that battle have 
been the slow work of years. 

The "Men of Our Times," are the men who indi- 
rectly by their moral influence helped to bring on this 
great final crisis, and also those who, when it was 
brought on, and the battle was set in array, guided it 
wisely, and helped to bring it to its triumphant close. 

In making our selection we find men of widely dif- 
ferent spheres and characters. Pure philanthropists, 
who, ignoring all selfish and worldly politics, have 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

labored against oppression and wrong; far-seeing 
statesmen, who could foresee the working of political 
causes from distant years ; brave naval and military 
men, educated in the schools of our country ; scientific 
men, who helped to perfect the material forces of war 
by their discoveries and ingenuity — all are united in 
one great crisis, and have had their share in one won- 
derful passage of the world's history. 

Foremost on the roll of "men of our time," it is 
but right and fitting that we place the honored and 
venerated name of the man who was called by God's 
providence to be the leader of the nation in our late 
great struggle, and to seal with his blood the procla- 
mation of universal liberty in this country — the name 

of 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The revolution through which the American nation 
has been passing was not a mere local convulsion. It 
was a war for a principle which concerns all mankind. 
It was the war for the rights of the working class of 
society as against the usurpation of privileged aristoc- 
racies. You can make nothing else of it. That is 
the reason why, like a shaft of light in the judgment 
day, it has gone through all nations, dividing the mul- 
titudes to the right and the left. For us and our 
cause, all the common working classes of Europe — all 
that toil and sweat, and are oppressed. Against us, 
all privileged classes, nobles, princes, bankers and 
great manufacturers, all who live at ease. A silent 
instinct, piercing to the dividing of soul and spirit, 
joints and marrow, has gone through the earth, and 
sent every soul with instinctive certainty where it be- 



working-men's revolution. 13 

longs. The poor laborers of Birmingham and Man- 
chester, the poor silk weavers of Lyons, to whom our 
conflict has been present starvation and lingering 
death, have stood bravely for us. No sophistries 
could blind or deceive them ; they knew that our cause 
was their cause, and they suffered their part heroically, 
as if fighting by our side, because they knew that our 
victory was to be their victory. On the other side, 
all aristocrats and holders of exclusive privileges have 
felt the instinct of opposition, and the sympathy with 
a struggling aristocracy, for they, too, felt that our 
victory would be their doom. 

This great contest has visibly been held in the hands 
of Almighty God, and is a fulfillment of the solemn 
prophecies with which the Bible is sown thick as stars, 
that He would spare the soul of the needy, and judge 
the cause of the poor. It was He who chose the in,- 
strument for this work, and He chose him with a visi- 
ble reference to the rights and interests of the great 
majority of mankind, for which he stood. 

Abraham Lincoln was in the strictest sense a man 
of the working classes. All his advantages and abili- 
ties were those of a man of the working classes, all 
his disadvantages and disabilities those of the working 
classes, and his position at the head of one of the most 
powerful nations of the earth was a sign to all who 
live by labor, that their day is coming. Lincoln was 
born to the inheritance of hard work, as truly as the 
poorest laborer's son that digs in our fields. He was 
born in Kentucky, in 1809. At seven years of age he 
was set to work, axe in hand, to clear up a farm in a 
Western forest. Until he was seventeen his life was 
that of a simple farm laborer, with only such intervals 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

of schooling as farm laborers get. Probably the school 
instruction of his whole life would not amount to more 
than six months. At nineteen he made a trip to New 
Orleans as a hired hand on a flat-boat, and on his re- 
turn he split the timber for a log cabin and built it, and 
enclosed ten acres of land with a rail fence of his own 
handiwork. The next year he hired himself for 
twelve dollars a month to build a flat-boat and take 
her to New Orleans, and any one who knows what 
the life of a Mississippi boatman was in those days, 
must know that it involved every kind of labor. In 
1832, in the Black Hawk Indian war, the hardy boatman 
volunteered to fight for his country, and was unani- 
mously elected a captain, and served with honor for a 
season in frontier military life. He was very popular 
with his soldiers for two reasons ; the first was his great 
physical strength ; the second, that he could tell more 
and better stories than any other man in the army. 
Odd constituents for a commander's character; but 
like everything else in Lincoln's life, the fact shows 
how wonderfully he represented, and therefore suited, 
the people. Some time after the war, the surveyor 
of Sangamon county, being driven with work, came 
to him to take the survey of a tract off from his hands. 
True, he had never studied surveying, but what of 
that ? He accepted the job, procured a chain and a 
treatise on surveying, and did the work. Do we not 
see in this a parallel of the wider wilderness which in 
later years he was to undertake to survey and fit for 
human habitation, without chart or surveyor's chain? 
After this, while serving as a postmaster, he began 
his law studies. He took the postmastership for the 



THE BOOKS HE READ. 15 

sake of reading all the papers that came into the town, 
at the same time borrowing the law books he was too 
poor to buy, and studying by the light of his evening 
fire. He soon acquired a name in the country about as 
a man of resources and shrewdness. He was one that 
people looked to for counsel in exigencies, and to 
whom they were ready to depute almost any enter- 
prise which needed skill and energy, or patience and 
justice. "He was in great request," says one of his 
biographers, "by thick-headed people, because of his 
clearness and skill in narration." It might well have 
been added, because also of his kindness, patience and 
perfect justness of nature in listening, apprehending 
and stating. 

Mr. Lincoln was now about twenty-three. His life 
thus far may perhaps be considered as his education ; 
at any rate, it is the part of his life which answers to 
the school years, college course, and professional stud- 
ies of a regularly educated lawyer at the East. It 
included, of actual "schooling," only the six months 
total already mentioned. Even then it was his mother 
who had taught him to read and write. Of the use of 
books of any kind, this backwoods graduate had little 
enough. His course of reading was a very thorough 
illustration of the ancient rule to "read not many but 
much." He read seven books over and over. Of 
three of them, the Bible, Shakspeare and ^Esop's Fa- 
bles, he could repeat large portions by heart. The 
other four were the Pilgrim's Progress, the Life of 
Washington, the Life of Franklin, and the Life of 
Henry Clay. It is a curious fact that neither then nor 
afterwards did he ever read a novel. He began Ivan- 



16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

hoe once, but was not interested enough to finish it. 
He was one of those men who have the peculiar fac- 
ulty of viewing this whole world of men and things 
as a side spectator, and the interest of the drama of 
life thus silently seen at first hand, was to him infinite- 
ly more interesting than any second hand imitation. 
u My life is story enough," once said a person of this 
peculiar temperament, "what should I want to read 
stories for?" The interest he felt in human beings 
was infinitely stronger with him than the interest in 
artistic representation. 

One of his biographers says that he " seldom bought 
a new book, and seldom read one," and he adds, with 
a good deal of truth, that "his education was almost 
entirely a newspaper one," and that he "was one of 
the most thorough newspaper readers in America." 

But that which was much more the real essence of 
his self-education, was the never-ceasing and strenuous 
course of laborious thought and reasoning that he 
kept up, upon the meaning, the connection, the ten- 
dency, the right and wrong, the helps or remedies, of 
all the past facts he read of, or of the present facts 
that he experienced in life. And this education he 
not only began early and pursued effectively, but he 
never ceased it. All his life he maintained that course 
of steady labor after practical knowledge and practi- 
cal wisdom. Whenever he could read a good book 
he did, and his practice for a long time was, after hav- 
ing finished it, to write out an analysis of it ; a very 
fatiguing but very improving process. One of his 
companions while a young "hired man," described 
him in after years, as " the likeliest boy in God's world. 



HIS LANGUAGE. 17 

He would work all day as hard as any of us, and study 
by fire-light in the log house half the night, and in this 
way he made himself a thorough practical surveyor." 
Another man described him as he saw him while work- 
ing for a living, in 1830, or thereabouts, "lying on a 
trundle-bed, with one leg stretched out rocking the cra- 
dle containing the child of his hostess, while he himself 
was absorbed in the study of English grammar." 

The world has many losses that mankind are not 
conscious of. The burning of the Alexandrian library 
was an irreparable loss, but a greater loss is in the si- 
lence of great and peculiar minds. Had there been 
any record of what Lincoln thought and said while he 
thus hewed his way through the pedantic mazes of 
book learning, we might have some of the newest, the 
strangest, the most original contributions to the phi- 
losophy of grammar and human language in general 
that ever have been given. They would have savored 
very much of Beethoven's answer when the critics 
asked him why he would use consecutive octaves in 
music. "Because they sounded well," said the scorn- 
ful old autocrat ; and Lincoln's quiet perseverance in a 
style of using the English language peculiarly his own 
had something of the same pertinacity. He seemed 
equally amused by the critical rules of rhetoric, and 
as benevolently and paternally indulgent to the mass 
of eager scholars who thought them important, as he 
was to the turbulent baby whom he rocked with one 
leg while he pursued his grammatical studies. But 
after his own quaint, silent fashion, he kept up his in- 
quiries into the world of book learning with remark- 
able perseverance, and his friend and biographer, Mr. 



18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Arnold, says, became "thoroughly at home in all the 
liberal studies and scientific questions of the day." 
This is rather strongly put, and we fancy that Lincoln 
would have smiled shrewdly over it, but the specifica- 
tions which Mr. Arnold adds are undoubtedly true. 
Mr. Lincoln "had mastered English, and made some 
progress in Latin, and knew the Bible more thoroughly 
than many who have spent their lives in its perusal." 

But what book learning he obtained would never 
have made him a lawyer, not to say President. The 
education which gave him his success in life was his 
self-training in the ability to understand and to state 
facts and principles about men and things. 

In 1836 our backwoodsman, flat-boat hand, captain, 
surveyor, obtained a license to practice law, and as 
might be expected, rose rapidly. One anecdote will 
show the esteem in which he was held in his neigh- 
borhood. A client came to him in a case relating to 
a certain land claim, and Lincoln said to him, "Your 
first step must be to take thirty thousand dollars and 
go and make a legal tender ; it of course will- be re- 
fused, but it is a necessary step." "But," said the 
man, "I haven't the thirty thousand dollars to make 
it with." "0, that's it; just step over to the bank 
with me, and I'll get it." So into the bank they went, 
and Lincoln says to the cashier, "We just want to 
take thirty thousand dollars to make a legal tender 
with; I'll bring it back in an hour or two." The 
cashier handed across the money to "Honest Abe," 
and without a scratch of the pen in acknowledgment, 
he strode his way with the money, all in the most sa- 
cred simplicity, made the tender, and brought it back 



THE STOCKING OF MONEY. 19 

with as much nonchalance as if he had been borrow- 
ing a silver spoon of his grandmother. 

It was after he had been practicing law some time, 
that another incident took place, showing him as cu- 
riously scrupulous about small sums as he was trusty 
and trusted about large ones. When he left New Sa- 
lem and went to Springfield, he was still so poor that 
he even found it difficult to procure the necessaries of 
life. For some years he struggled forward, when" one 
day there came a post-office agent, who in pursuance 
of the routine business of the department, presented 
to the almost penniless and still struggling ex-post- 
master a regulation draft for the balance due to the 
Washington office, in all $17.60. Dr. Henry, a friend 
of Mr. Lincoln's, happening to fall in with the agent, 
went along with him, intending to offer to lend the 
money, as it was about certain that he could have no 
such sum as that at his command. When the draft 
was presented, Lincoln asked the officer to be seated, 
sat down himself a few moments, looking puzzled; 
then asked to be excused for a little, stepped out to 
his boarding house and returned. He brought with 
him an old stocking, untied it, and poured out on the 
table a quantity of small silver coin and "red cents." 
These they counted; they amounted to $17.60, the pre- 
cise amount called for by the draft. More than that — it 
was the very money called for by the draft, for at leav- 
ing his postmastership, the punctilious officer had tied 
up the balance on hand, and kept it by him, awaiting 
the legal call for it. At paying it over, he remarked 
that he never used, even temporarily, any money that 
was not his. This money, he added, he felt belonged 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

to the government, and he had no right to exchange 
or use it for any purposes of his own. 

His honesty, shrewdness, energy and keen practical 
insight into men and things soon made him the most 
influential man in his state, both as lawyer and poli- 
tician. Of this influence, and most especially of its 
depending upon his wonderfully direct plain common 
sense, and the absolute honesty and utter justness of 
his mind, there are many anecdotes. In politics and 
in law alike, both the strength of his conscientiousness 
and the kind of yearning after a rounded wholeness 
of view which was an intellectual instinct with him, 
forced him habitually to consider all sides of any ques- 
tion. " For fifteen years before his election to the 
Presidency," says one writer, in striking illustration of 
this habit in politics, "he subscribed regularly to 
The Richmond Enquirer and The Charleston Mercury. 
He grew slowly, as public opinion grew; and as an 
anti-slavery man, was a gradual convert." Thus it re- 
sulted that "while PJiett and Wise, with slavery in 
full feather, wrote every day the inviolateness of se- 
cession and the divinity of bondage, these two Illinois 
lawyers, (Lincoln and his partner, Herndon,) in their 
little square office, read every vaunting cruel word, 
paid to read it, and educated themselves out of their 
mutual indignations." 

In like manner he was fair and impartial in legal 
investigations. " The jury" says one account, "always 
got from him a fair statement of any case in hand, 
and years later it was remarked by the Chief Justice 
of Illinois that when Lincoln spoke, he argued both 



A JUST LAWYER. 21 

sides of the case so well that a speech in response was 
always superfluous." 

Mr. Lincoln's fellow lawyers used to say that he was 
in professional matters, "perversely honest." He 
could not take hold heartily on the wrong side. He 
never engaged in it, knowingly ; if a man desired to re- 
tain him whose cause was bad, he declined, and told the 
applicant not to go to law. A lady once came to him 
to have him prosecute a claim to some land, and gave 
him the papers in the case for examination, together 
with a retainer in the shape of a check for two hun- 
dred dollars. Next day she came to see what her 
prospects were, when Mr. Lincoln told her that he had 
examined the documents very carefully, that she "had 
not a peg to hang her claim on," and that he could 
not conscientiously advise her to bring an action. 
Having heard this judgment, the lady thanked him, 
took her papers, and was about to depart. " Wait a 
moment, "said Mr. Lincoln, "here is the check you gave 
me." " But," said she, "Mr. Lincoln, I think you have 
earned that" " No, no," he answered, insisting on 
her receiving it, " that would not be right. I can't 
take pay for doing my duty." 

He was quite as prompt and just in accepting un- 
profitable duty as in declining its profitable opposite. 
During all the early part of his legal practice in Spring- 
field, it was considered an unpopular and politically 
dangerous business for a lawyer to defend any fugitive 
slave on trial for surrender to the South, and even the 
brave Col. Baker, in those days also practicing there, 
on one occasion directly refused to defend such a case, 
saying that as a political man he could not afford it. 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

But the luckless applicant, having consulted with an 
abolitionist friend, went next to Lincoln, and got 
him. " He's not afraid of an unpopular case," said the 
friend ; " when I go for a lawyer to defend an arrest- 
ed fugitive slave, other lawyers will refuse me ; but if 
Mr. Lincoln is at home, he will always take up my 
case." 

On a few occasions after having even entered into 
the trial of a case, Mr. Lincoln would find that, as 
sometimes happens, he had been deceived by his own 
client, and that he really had not the right on his side. 
When this was the case, he could as it were be seen 
to wilt at once, and whatever further he might do in 
the case was only mechanical. In such a case, having 
an associate, and having refused to argue it, the asso- 
ciate argued the case and won it, and then offered to 
divide with Mr. Lincoln the fee of $900 ; but Lincoln 
would not take a cent. Once in defending a man 
sued for delivering lambs instead of sheep, the testi- 
mony clearly showed that such delivery had been 
made. Instead of trying to confuse the witnesses or 
becloud the evidence, Mr. Lincoln ascertained how 
many such lambs had been delivered, and quietly told 
the jury that they must give a verdict against his 
client. He simply cautioned them to be just in fixing 
the damages. When he had recovered a verdict 
against a railroad company, and a certain offset against 
his client was to be deducted, he interrupted the final 
decision just in time to have the offset made larger by 
a certain amount which he had just found out ought 
to be added to it. His careful and primitive scrupu- 
lousness was just as marked in dealing with any asso- 



THE ARMSTRONG CASE. 23 

ciates in a case. When he received a joint fee his inva- 
riable custom was to divide it properly, and tie up in a 
separate parcel each associate's part of the very money 
received, duly labelled and directed. 

In 1841 Mr. Lincoln argued before the Supreme 
Court of Illinois, the case of Nance, a negro girl, who 
had been sold within the state. A note had been given 
in payment for her, and the suit was brought to re- 
cover upon this note. Mr. Lincoln, defending, proved 
that Nance was free, and that thus nothing had been 
sold ; so that the note was void. The Court below 
had sustained the note, but the Supreme Court, in 
accordance with Mr. Lincoln's argument, reversed this 
judgment. The decision made Nance free, and put a 
stop to sales of human beings in Illinois. 

Another remarkable case in which he was engaged, 
was, the defence of young Armstrong from a charge 
of murder. This Armstrong was the son of a man 
who had befriended and employed Mr. Lincoln in 
youth, and the present charge was, that he had killed 
a certain person who had unquestionably died from in- 
juries received in a camp-meeting riot where young 
Armstrong was present. The father was dead, and 
the mother aged and poor ; a chain of apparently per- 
fectly conclusive circumstantial evidence had been 
forged, which had convinced the community of Arm- 
strong's guilt ; indeed, had he not been safely secured 
in a strong jail he would have been lynched. Neither 
the youth nor his old mother had any money. The 
people and the newspapers were furious against the 
prisoner; and his fate appeared absolutely certain even 
to himself, when Mr. Lincoln, hearing of the matter 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

in some way, volunteered for the defence, and was 
gladly accepted. When the trial came on, the evi- 
dence for the prosecution was given, and constituted 
what appeared to the audience a perfectly conclusive 
proof of guilt. Lincoln cross-examined very lightly, 
only correcting up and ascertaining a few places and 
dates ; and his own witnesses were only to show com- 
paratively good previous character for the prisoner. 

The prosecutor, sure of his prey, made only a short 
and formal argument. Mr. Lincoln followed for the 
defence. He began slowly, calmly, carefully. He 
took hold of the heart of the evidence for the state — 
that of the chief witness. He pointed out first one 
discrepancy, and then another, and then another. He 
came at last to that part of the evidence where this 
principal witness had sworn positively that he had 
been enabled by the light of the moon to see the 
prisoner give the fatal blow with a slung shot ; and 
taking up the almanac he showed that at the hour 
sworn to on the night sworn to the moon had not risen ; 
that the whole of this evidence was a perjury. 

The audience, gradually stirred and changed in the 
temper of their minds by the previous series of skil- 
fully displayed inconsistencies, rising from hate into 
sympathy, flamed suddenly up at this startling rev- 
elation, and the verdict of "not guilty" was almost 
visible in the faces of the jury. But this was not all. 
Turning upon the infamous man who had sought to 
swear away another's life, Mr. Lincoln, now fully kin- 
dled into his peculiarly slow but intensely fiery wrath, 
held him up to the view of court and jury and audi- 
ence, in such a horrid picture of guilt and shame that 



THE TWO LARGE FEES. 25 

the miserable fellow, stunned and confounded, actu- 
ally fled from the face of the incensed lawyer out of 
the court room. And in conclusion, Mr. Lincoln ap- 
pealed to the jury to lay aside any temporary preju- 
dices, and to do simple justice. And he referred to 
the motive of his own presence there, — to his grati- 
tude for the kindness of the prisoner's father in past 
years, in a manner so affecting as to bring tears from 
many eyes. In less than half an hour the jury re- 
turned a verdict of not guilty, and the young man 
was set free, his life saved and his character restored. 
When he went for the second time into public life, 
on the passage of the Nebraska Bill in 1854, he was 
becoming eminent in the difficult and lucrative de- 
partment of patent law. But his fellow lawyers used 
to call his fees "ridiculously small." Indeed, he never 
took but one large fee, and that his friends insisted on 
his taking. This was $5,000 from the Illinois Central 
Railroad Company, one of the richest corporations in 
the country, and for very valuable services in a very 
important case. Once before this he had received 
what he thought a large fee, and he made a good use 
of it. The sum was five hundred dollars, and a friend 
who called to see him the next morning, found him 
counting it over and over, and piling it up on the table 
to look at. "Look here," he said, "see what a heap of 

money I've got from the case ! Did you ever 

see anything like it ! Why, I never had so much 
money in my life before, put it all together!" Then 
he added, that if he could only get another $250 to 
put with it, he would at once buy a quarter-section of 
land, and settle it on his old step -mother. This was 



26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

an odd use to make of a ma^'s first important gains 
in money, and his friend, who at once loaned him the 
required additional amount, tried to make him give 
the land for the old lady's life only. But Lincoln in- 
sisted on his own plan, saying, "I shall do no such 
thing. It is a poor return at the best, for all the good 
woman's devotion and fidelity to me, and there isn't 
going to be any half-way work about it." 

Mr. Lincoln was a great favorite at the bar, his good 
nature, his kindness, and his unfailing flow of stories, 
making him a most welcome guest on every circuit. 

He never took technical advantages, but on the 
other hand often showed an adversary some error in 
matter of form, and suggested to him how to cure it. 
His forensic habits were excessively simple, but very 
effective. The most telling of all of them was to be 
in the right; for when juries know that a lawyer ha- 
bitually refuses to be on the wrong side, habitually 
breaks down if on that side, simply from conscious- 
ness of the fact, and habitually makes strong and clear 
arguments if on the right side, they are prepossessed 
in favor of that lawyer before he says a word. He 
did not make speeches to the jury, he talked with 
them ; often in warm weather taking off his coat for 
coolness, selecting some intelligent looking juryman, 
reasoning with him until convinced, then taking 
another, and so on. He did not browbeat witnesses, but 
kept them comfortable and good humored. In short, 
Mr. Lincoln was decidedly and deservedly a powerful 
as well as a successful lawyer. He must have been of 
great professional powers to maintain himself, and rise 
to the leadership of the bar, with the competitors he 



FIRST CANDIDACY AND SPEECH. 27 

had. Among these were Mr. Douglas, Secretary 
Browning, Senator Trumbull, Governor Yates, Judge 
Davis of the U. S. Supreme Court, Col. Baker, Gen. 
Hardin, Gov. Bissell, Gen. Shields, Senator Washburn, 
N. B. Judd, Gen. Logan, and others. He became recog- 
nized by his fellow-citizens as "the first lawyer in Illi- 
nois," and one of the judges on the bench described 
him as "the finest lawyer he ever knew," and another 
as "one of the ablest he had ever known." 

Like so many of his profession, Mr. Lincoln was 
very early a politician. Indeed, his devotion to poli- 
tics interfered very considerably with his gains, and 
delayed his eminence in his profession. The value to 
his fellow-countrymen of the political results which he 
was the means of bringing to pass, is, however, so in- 
finitely beyond any money value, that no regret can 
be felt at his ambition. 

Mr. Lincoln's popularity among his neighbors, his 
assiduous study of the newspapers, his intense and 
untiring meditations and reasonings on the political 
questions of the day, brought him into the political 
field pretty early and pretty well prepared. It was 
in 1832, when he was twenty-three years old, that his 
first candidacy and his first speech took place. The 
story and speech all together are so short that they 
can be inserted here in full. On the day of election, 
then, Mr. Lincoln's opponent spoke first, and delivered 
a long harangue of the regular political sort. Lin- 
coln, who followed him, completed his oration in just 
seventy -nine words — less than one minute's talking. 
This is what he said : " Gentlemen, fellow citizens : — 
I presume you know who I am ; I am humble Abra- 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ham Lincoln. I have been solicited by many friends 
to become a candidate for the Legislature. My poli- 
tics can be briefly stated. I am in favor of a national 
bank, I am in favor of the internal improvement sys- 
tem, and a high protective tariff. These are my sen- 
timents and political principles. If elected I shall be 
thankful, if not, it will be all the same." 

He was beaten, however, in spite of his terseness. 
But in his own district he received all but seven out 
of 284 votes; and he was never beaten again in any 
election by the people. 

His actual political career, not counting this defeat, 
began in 1834, when he was chosen member of the 
State Legislature, and being too poor to afford a horse, 
walked over a hundred miles to Vandalia to take his 
seat. He remained a member for four successive 
terms of two years each. Mr. Douglas became a 
member two years after him, in 1836; the two men 
quickly became party leaders on their respective sides 
of the house, and thus their political courses and their 
political rivalries began almost together. At the 
two latter of his four legislative terms, Mr. Lincoln 
was the Whig candidate for Speaker, and once lacked 
only one vote of being elected. Mr. Lincoln's eight 
years' service in the State Legislature was busy and 
useful, and gave him an assured and high position in 
his party. The work done was usually of a local 
character, of course, its most important departments 
being that of the improvement of internal communi- 
cation by railroad and canal, and that of education. 

But even on the question of slavery, the one signi- 
ficant occasion for utterance which arose was promptly 



COURSE IN LEGISLATURE. 29 

improved, and in such a manner as to show both the 
settled feelings and convictions of Lincoln's mind on 
the subject, and his characteristic practice of restrict- 
ing his official utterances strictly to the exigencies of 
the case. His dislike of slavery was not only the con- 
sequence of his inborn sense of justice and kindly 
feelings, but was his direct inheritance from his pa- 
rents, who left Kentucky and settled in Indiana ex- 
pressly to bring up their family on free instead of 
slave soil. In March, 1839, some strong pro-slavery 
resolutions were passed by the Legislature of Illinois, 
and by large majorities in both houses. This, the few 
anti-slavery members could not prevent. But Mr. 
Lincoln and Mr. Dan Stone took the most decided 
stand in their power on the other side, by putting on 
record on the House journals a formal protest against 
the resolutions. In this protest, they declared views 
that would to-day be considered very conservative, 
about legal or political interference with slavery ; but 
they also declared in the most unqualified manner, and 
in so many words, their belief "that the institution of 
slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy. n 
At the end of his fourth term, Mr. Lincoln declined 
a further nomination, finding it absolutely necessary 
to devote more time than hitherto to his own private 
affairs. When he thus left the Legislature of his own 
accord, he was virtually the leader of his party in the 
State, having reached that creditable and influential 
though unofficial position by his own good qualities, 
in the eight years of his life ending with his thirty- 
fifth. It was a great achievement for a man no older, 
and so destitute of outside help. 
3 



30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

For four years Mr. Lincoln now remained a hard- 
working lawyer, although he did a good deal of polit- 
ical work besides, particularly in "stumping" Illinois 
and Indiana in the Presidential canvass of 1844. In 
this campaign Mr. Lincoln made many strong and ef- 
fective speeches for Henry Clay, and though his can- 
didate was beaten, his own reputation as a politician 
and speaker was much increased. In 1846 he was 
elected to Congress as a Whig, and his extreme popu- 
larity at home is shown by the fact that his own ma- 
jority on this occasion was 1,511 in the Springfield 
district, while Mr. Clay's had been only 914. 

During this congressional term, Mr. Lincoln met the 
grinding of the great question of the day — the upper 
and nether millstone of slavery and freedom revolving 
against each other. Lincoln's whole nature inclined 
him to be a harmonizer of conflicting parties, rather 
than a committed combatant on either side. He was 
firmly and from principle an enemy to slavery, but the 
ground he occupied in Congress was in some respects 
a middle one between the advance guard of the anti- 
slavery army and the spears of the fire-eaters. He 
voted with John Quincy Adams for the receipt of 
anti-slavery petitions ; he voted with Giddings for a 
committee of inquiry into the constitutionality of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, and the expedi- 
ency of abolishing slavery in that district ; he voted 
for the various resolutions prohibiting slavery in the 
territories to be acquired from Mexico, and he voted 
forty-two times for the Wilmot Proviso. On one occa- 
sion, he offered a plan for abolishing slavery in the 
District of Columbia, by compensation from the na- 



COURSE IN CONGRESS. 31 

tional treasury, with the consent of a majority of the 
citizens. He opposed the annexation of Texas, but 
voted for the bill to pay the expenses of the war. He 
voted against paying for slaves as property, when that 
question came up in the celebrated Pacheco case, and 
thus recorded his denial of the right of owning men, 
or of its acknowledgment by the nation. 

During this term of service in Congress, Mr. Lin- 
coln was a laborious and faithful public servant ; always 
present to vote, and always ready for business ; and 
his speeches, homely and rough as they were, showed 
so much broad strong sense, natural rectitude, sincerity, 
and power of reasoning, as to give him a good position 
as a debater. He declined a re-election ; tried for but 
did not obtain the commissionership of the Land Office 
at Washington; declined appointments as Secretary 
and as Governor of Oregon Territory; returned to 
his home and his work ; was unsuccessful as candidate 
for the United States Senate in the Illinois Legislature 
of 1849-50 ; and labored industriously at his profes- 
sion, until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
the Kansas Nebraska Bill, and the violences and in- 
iquities connected with them, called him once more 
into public life. 

He now took the field, heart and soul against the 
plot to betray our territories into slavery, and to perpet- 
uate the power of that institution over the whole 
country. Henceforth he was all his life a public man ; 
first a prominent champion in the decisively impor- 
tant state of Illinois, and afterwards the standard bear- 
er and the martyr of Freedom in America. 

That contest in Illinois, in which the political doc- 
trines of Mr. Douglas were the central theme of dis- 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

cussion, and in which he himself on one side and Mr. 
Lincoln on the other, were the leading speakers and 
the controlling minds, was an important act in that 
great drama of emancipation which culminated in the 
Rebellion. In Mr. Lincoln's life it was if possible 
still greater in comparative importance ; for his de- 
bates with Douglas determined his reputation as a 
speaker and a public man, and lifted him to the posi- 
tion from which he stepped into the presidential chair. 

During other previous and subsequent portions of 
his life, other traits of Mr. Lincoln's character were 
often and clearly exemplified. But at no time was he 
nearly as plainly and strikingly prominent as a power, 
as during his contest with that bold and energetic pol- 
itician and remarkably ready and forcible debater, 
Stephen A. Douglas. 

Their first great public duel, as it may be called, was 
at Springfield, in October, 1854, just after the passage 
of the Nebraska bill. The country was all aflame with 
excitement. Every fibre of justice, honor, honesty, 
conscience that there was in the community was in 
that smarting and vibrating state which follows the 
infliction of a violent blow, and Douglas had come 
back to his own state to soothe down the irritation 
and to defend his wicked and unpopular course be- 
fore the aroused tribunal of his fellow citizens. 

He was to defend his course and conduct to a great 
audience assembled at the State fair, and Mr. Lincoln 
was to answer him. 

Never was there a greater contrast between two men. 
Douglas might be called a brilliant impersonation of 
all the mere worldly forces of human nature. He 



DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 33 

had a splendid physique, with all the powers of the 
most captivating oratory, the melody of a most aston- 
ishing voice which ran with ease through every gamut 
of human feeling, grave, gay, pathetic, passionate, en- 
thusiastic ; now rising with irresistible impetuosity, now 
mocking with gay and careless defiance, and with this 
voice and this person, he was master of all those shad- 
ings and delicacies of sophistry by which the worse 
can be made to appear the better reason. He knew 
well how to avoid answering a telling argument by a 
dazzling glitter of side issues — to make a plain man 
believe he had got his difficulty solved, when he had 
been only skilfully bewitched, and made to forget 
where it was. In a popular audience he had some- 
thing for every one. Gaiety, gallantry and compli- 
ments for ladies, assured confidence for doubters, ve- 
hement assertions for timid people, stormy brow-beat- 
ings, and lion roars of denunciation, to finish with a 
grand sweep the popular impression which his sophis- 
tries and assertions had begun. Of truth, he made 
that very sparing use which demagogues always do. A 
little blue line of steel makes a whole heavy headed 
iron axe go through the wood, — and so Douglas just 
skilfully and artistically tipped the edges of heavy 
masses of falsehood with the cutting force of some 
undeniable truth. 

Of moral sensibility Douglas had not enough in his 
nature, even to understand that kind of material in 
others, and to make allowance for it. Nothing could 
be more exactly the contrary of Lincoln's scrupulous 
careful self-education, in pure questions of the right and 
the wrong of things, than Douglas' glittering, careless, 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

reckless, defiant mode of treating all these subjects. 
Lincoln had trained himself always to ask, What is it 
right to do ? Douglas, What can I do ? Lincoln, to 
enquire What course ought they to take ? Douglas, 
What course can I make them take ? Lincoln, to ask, 
What is the truth — Douglas, What can be made to 
seem truth. His life question was an inquiry, pure and 
simple, how much can I get, how much can I do, 
without losing my hold over men and being turned 
out of society ? 

The pure moral aspects of political questions, he 
flouted and scoffed at as unworthy the attention of a 
practical politician. The rights of human beings, the 
eternal laws of rectitude, he treated as a skilful con- 
jurer treats so many gaily painted balls, which he 
throws up and tosses and catches, simply to show his 
own agility ; he played with them when they came in 
his way, just as he thought he could make them most 
effective for his own purposes. 

But if he did not understand or care for eternal 
principles, he was perfect master of all the weak and 
low and petty side of human nature. He knew how 
to stir up all the common-place, base and ignoble 
passions of man ; to bring his lower nature into lively 
exercise. 

The first day in the fair, the multitude was given 
up to him, and he swept and played on them as a 
master musician sweeps a piano, and for the hour he 
seemed to be irresistible, bearing all things in his own 
way. 

Lincoln had this advantage, when his turn came, 
that he represented that higher portion of human 



DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 35 

nature, of which Douglas had little knowledge, and 
which his mode of treatment had left almost wholly 
untouched. We have spoken of the vast legal influ- 
ence which Lincoln had gradually acquired in his own 
state, by the intense pertinacity with which he identified 
himself in every case with right and justice, so that 
the mere fact that he had accepted a cause was a 
strong reason in advance for believing it the true one. 

The people had been excited, amused, dazzled and 
bewildered, and were tossing restlessly as the sea swells 
and dashes after a gale — when that plain man without 
outward " form or comeliness," without dazzle of ora- 
tory, or glitter of rhetoric, rose to give them in a 
fatherly talk, the simple eternal right of the whole 
thing. 

It was, he felt, an hour of destiny, a crisis in the great 
battle to be fought for mankind for ages to come, and 
an eye witness thus describes the scene: "His whole 
heart was in the subject. He quivered with feeling 
and emotion; the house was as still as death." And 
another account describes how "the effect of this 
speech was most magnetic and powerful. Cheer upon 
cheer interrupted him, women waved their handker- 
chiefs, men sprung from their seats and waved their 
hats in uncontrollable enthusiasm." Mr. Douglas was 
present at this speech, and was the most uneasy au- 
ditor there. As soon as Mr. Lincoln had concluded, 
Mr. Douglas jumped up and said that he had been 
abused, " though," he added, "in a perfectly courte- 
ous manner." He went on with a rejoinder, and 
spoke for some time, but without much success. In 
fact, he was astounded and disconcerted at finding 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

that there was so much to be said against him, and 
that there was a man to say it so powerfully. The self- 
confident and even arrogant tone in which he had 
opened the debate was gone. At closing, he an- 
nounced himself to continue his remarks in the eve- 
ning, but he did not do it. He had received a blow 
too tremendous even for his immense vigor, and from 
which he could not so quickly recover. 

A little while afterwards, Douglas spoke again and 
Lincoln answered him again, at Peoria, and with a sim- 
ilar result. The vast positive will of the " Little 
Giant" could not stand up against the still loftier 
power with which Mr. Lincoln assailed him from the 
height of a moral superiority that irresistibly carried 
with it the best convictions of the whole community, 
and cowed the defiant wrong-doer. Mr. Lincoln was 
right Mr. Douglas felt himself vanquished by a pow- 
er incomprehensible to himself, and of which none of 
his political calculations ever took account. 

But as regards the struggle at this time in Illinois, 
the fact that he felt himself over-weighted, was suffi- 
ciently proved by his declining, after the two duels 
at Springfield and Peoria, to proceed, as Mr. Lincoln 
invited him, with a series of such debates in other 
parts of the State. 

Mr. Lincoln, having thus publicly shown himself far 
stronger than the strongest of his opponents, proceed- 
ed to show himself a man of kindly self-command, by 
foregoing the Republican nomination to the U. S. 
Senate, and giving it to Hon. Lyman Trumbull, in 
order to save the risk of admitting Matteson, the pro- 
slavery candidate. Unquestionably this conduct coin- 



DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 37 

cided with the shrewdest selfishness; but very few 
are the politicians from whom a selfishness small and 
near would not conceal the larger and further one. 
It was by earnest and assiduous personal influence 
that Mr. Lincoln secured Mr. Trumbull's election. 

It is said of a certain great diplomatist, that he was 
so accustomed to dealing with men as knaves that 
when he had to do with an honest man he always blun- 
dered. Douglas' mistake and defeat were precisely 
of this kind. He had so little sense of conscience or 
moral feeling himself that he was perfectly unprepared 
for the uprising of these sentiments on the part of the 
people, and astonished at the power which a man 
might wield simply from addressing a class of senti- 
ments which he habitually ignored. 

So in Congress, when the petition of the three thou- 
sand clergymen was presented against the Kansas and 
Nebraska bill, he was in a perfect rage, and roared like 
a lion at bay. That this contemptible question of 
right and wrong should get up such an excitement 
and seriously threaten such a brilliant stroke of di- 
plomacy as he meditated, seemed to him, in all sin- 
cerity, perfectly ridiculous — he could not sufficiently 
express his hatred and contempt. 

Mere power as a debater, either in parliamentary 
assemblies or before popular meetings, has often 
existed, without any share of the calmer, and larger, 
and profounder, and more reflective abilities of the 
statesman. Mr. Lincoln possessed both, and in both, 
his methods were alike of an intuitively practical, 
and remarkably direct, simple and effective nature. 
Doubtless he had often given proofs of skill in practi- 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

cal politics, during his consultations of the preceding 
twenty years, with the leaders and managers of his 
party in Illinois. Obscure operations of local party 
organizations seldom make any record, or become vis- 
ible at all on the surface of history. But the man who 
in an adverse hour, when all other counsellors have 
failed, can unite discordant elements into a new party, 
must be confessed to have statesmanlike skill. This is 
more peculiarly so when this party must be founded 
on a moral principle, and must be bounded and cir- 
cumscribed in its working by moral rules and restraints. 
While unprincipled men can help themselves by any 
and all sorts of means, men of principle are confined 
to those within certain limits, and the difficulties of or- 
ganization in such cases are vastly greater. 

When in 1856 the Illinois convention met to choose 
delegates to the National Convention that nominated 
Fremont, there was in the political ocean a wild chaos 
of elements. Free Soil men, Anti-Nebraska men, 
Liberty Party men, Native Americans, Old Whigs 
and Old Democrats, and newly arrived emigrants of 
no party at all, mixed up in heterogeneous confu- 
sion, tossing and tumbling blindly about for a new 
platform to stand on. After long and vain discussion, 
the committee on a platform sent for Mr. Lincoln and 
asked for a suggestion. All the sections of the Conven- 
tion were opposed to slavery extension, but in no oth- 
er current political question were they at one. There 
was imminent danger of discord and division. Their 
calm adviser quietly said, "Take the Declaration of 
Independence, and Hostility to Slavery Extension. 
Let us build our new party on the rock of the Declara- 



STATESMANLIKE MORALITY. 39 

tion of Independence, and the gates of hell shall not 
prevail against us." Mr. Lincoln's profound and unfail- 
ing moral sense had seized upon the relation between 
the heart of the United States and eternal right. His 
suggestion embodied the only doctrine that could 
have won in the coming battle. What he advised 
was done, and the party, on this platform, revolution- 
ized Illinois, made Mr. Lincoln President, extinguished 
slavery, and reorganized the nation. 

At Philadelphia, the same question came up again, 
and was solved by adopting the same principle. It 
was on this occasion that Mr. Lincoln's high position 
and important influence in the northwest received the 
first acknowledgement that he was obtaining a na- 
tional reputation. He obtained a vote of one hun- 
dred and ten for the Vice Presidency on the prelimi- 
nary or informal ballot. 

The great effort, however, which finally and firmly 
established Mr. Lincoln's reputation as a speaker and 
statesman, was in 1858, when he and Douglas once 
more were brought to a face encounter before the 
people of Illinois, as opposing candidates for the U. 
S. Senate. 

During the months of August, September and Octo- 
ber, according to the honest western custom, these two 
opposing candidates stumped the State together, and 
presented their opposing claims and views in a series 
of public gatherings. These meetings were in conse- 
quence of Mr. Lincoln's invitation, but Mr. Douglas 
in accepting adroitly contrived to name terms that 
gave him the opening and the closing turns, not only 
of the whole series, but of four out of seven of the 
meetings. 



40 ABRAHAM LESVQLJS. 

In the June and July preceding, Mr. Lincoln made 
three other speeches, two at Springfield and one at 
Chicago, which may be considered a sort of preface 
to the great debates. The first of these, at Spring- 
field, June 17, 1858, was in some respects the most 
remarkable of Mr. Lincoln's oratorical productions. 
It was made at the close of the Republican State 
Convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln a candidate 
for the U. S. Senate ; and its opening paragraph is so 
remarkable for style, so heavy with meaning, and so 
instinct with political foresight, that it is worth quot- 
ing entire. It is as follows : 

"Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Convention: 
— If we could first know where we are, and whither 
we are tending, we could better judge what to do, 
and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year 
since a policy was initiated with the avowed object 
and confident promise of putting an end to slavery 
agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that 
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly 
augmented. In my opinion it will not cease until a 
crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house 
divided against itself cannot stand. 1 I believe this 
government cannot endure permanently half slave and 
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved 
— I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect 
it will cease to be divided. It will become all one 
thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery 
will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where 
the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the 
course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will 



THE DEBATES -WITH DOUGLAS. 41 

push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all 
the States, old as well as new, North as well as South." 

In this brief statement, Mr. Lincoln set forth the 
whole object of the southern and northern parties on 
the slavery question, and though he did not prophesy 
which way the contest would be decided, he did 
prophesy exactly the two alternatives to one of which 
the country was necessarily to advance. It is further 
noticeable here that Mr. Lincoln's statement includes 
exactly the same prophecy, only not so classically 
worded, as Mr. Seward's famous phrase, in his speech 
at Rochester, the following October, of u an Irrepress- 
ible Conflict. 1 ' And once more ; the opening sentence, 
as a writer upon Mr. Lincoln has shown, is in like 
manner curiously coincident in thought with the first 
sentence of another still more famous speech — Daniel 
Webster's reply to Hayne. Mr. Webster said : 

"When the mariner has been tossed for many days 
in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally 
avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the ear- 
liest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascer- 
tain how far the elements have driven him from his 
true course. Let us imitate that prudence, and before 
we float further, refer to the point from which we de- 
parted, that we may at least be able to conjecture 
where we now are." 

That is a stately and sonorous opening, majestic 
and poetical. Now compare it with Mr. Lincoln's 
synonym: "If we could first know where we are, 
and whither we are tending, we could better judge 
what to do, and how to do it." The thing could not 
have been said more shortly, more directly, more 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

clearly, more strongly in English. As the writer 
observes from whom this parallel is taken, Mr. Webster 
used eighty-two words, nearly a quarter of them hav- 
ing over one syllable; Mr. Lincoln only twenty-five, 
of which only three, or less than one-eighth, have 
more than one syllable. Counting still more closely, 
we find that Mr. Webster used 347 letters, to Mr. Lin- 
coln's 88." In less than one-third the words, in just 
over one-fourth the letters, and without the least ap- 
proach to a figure of speech, Mr. Lincoln said what 
Mr. Webster did. "This," to quote once more, "may 
seem a petty method of comparing orators ; but it 
reveals a great secret of directness, clearness, simplic- 
ity and force of style ; it goes far to explain how Mr. 
Lincoln convinced an audience." 

"This speech," says Mr. Arnold, "was the text 
of the great debate between Lincoln and Doug- 
las." It states the question in the United States as 
between slavery and freedom, with very great strength 
and plainness, and lays down the principles that apply 
to it with equal power. It had been carefully pre- 
pared beforehand, as a manifesto for which the times 
were ripe. For the first time it placed the speaker pub- 
licly upon advanced anti-slavery ground ; and it is by no 
means improbable that in taking that ground, Mr. Lin- 
coln had some secret conscious or half conscious feel- 
ing not only that he was marking out the place that 
his party must occupy in the coming struggle, but 
that in doing so he assumed the place of standard- 
bearer. He explained the doctrines of the Nebraska 
Act, and the Dred Scott decision ; showed how the 
Democratic party had become ranged on the side of 



THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 43 

slavery; explained how the result of the Dred Scott 
decision, together with the indifferent policy so jaunt- 
ily vaunted by Douglas, of "not caring whether slav- 
ery were voted up or down," must result in a final 
victory of slavery; and showed how Mr. Douglas 1 
doctrines permitted and invited that final victory. 
And having thus showed u where we are, and whither 
we are tending," he ended with a solemn but cheering 
exhortation, "what to do and how to do it." "The 
result," he said, "is not doubtful. We shall not fail, 
if we stand firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may 
accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but sooner or later, 

THE VICTORY IS SURE TO COME." 

That is the language, not of a party politician, re- 
commending expedient nostrums, but of a statesman 
who feels profoundly that his people are sound at 
heart, and will assuredly one day do full justice ; who 
proclaims in advance the eternal victory of the right 
side, and boldly calls on all who hear him to advance 
up to the line of their own consciences. 

Before delivering this speech, Mr. Lincoln locked 
himself into a room with' his partner, Mr. Herndon, 
and read him the first paragraph of the speech. 
"What do you think of it?" said he. Herndon an- 
swered, "I think it is all true, but I doubt whether it 
is good policy to say it now." Mr. Lincoln replied, 
"That makes no difference; it is the truth, and the 
nation is entitled to it." This was both honest and 
politic ; for if the ground of principle as against ex- 
pediency had not been taken, there was none left to 
oppose the reasonings of Mr. Douglas, which were 
extremely adroit, and so far as expediency admitted, 
indeed unanswerable. 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

In the conduct of that remarkable campaign of 
1858, Mr. Douglas was the advocate of expediency, 
Mr. Lincoln of principle. Mr. Douglas appealed to 
the prejudices of the white race against the black, and 
argued in favor of present ease and selfish indifference 
to justice in our conduct as a nation. Mr. Lincoln 
incessantly appealed to the consciences of his audi- 
ence, to all that part of human nature which is kindly, 
which is just, which is noble ; to the broad doctrines 
upon which our national freedom was originally based. 
It is true that along with these main currents of de- 
bate numerous minor questions and side issues came 
up ; but such was the pervading color, the chief drift 
of the discussion. Over and over and over again, 
there sounds out among the words of Douglas, "This 
is a white man's government ; the negro ought not to 
vote." And even more constant is the lofty reply, "I 
stand by the Declaration of Independence, and the 
everlasting rights of humanity. The negro is a man, 
and he ought to have all the rights of a man!" 

Mr. Lincoln's speech at Springfield, on June 17th, 
has been briefly described. Mr. Douglas, coming home 
to his own State, to justify his course, and receive his 
re-election, answered him in his Chicago speech of 
July 9th, and Mr. Lincoln rejoined next day. Doug- 
las spoke again, at Bloomington on the 16th, and at 
Springfield on the 17th, and on the latter day Mr, 
Lincoln spoke also at Springfield. In this speech he 
set forth a curious and characteristic contrast between 
himself and his opponent, in a grotesque and sarcastic 
manner that must have told sharply upon his western 
audience, while its comic surface is underlaid with the 



THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 45 

usual solid basis of conscious adherence to justice and 
principle. Mr. Lincoln said : 

" Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All 
the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been 
of his party for years past, have been looking upon 
him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President 
of the United States. They have seen in his round, 
jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshal- 
ships and cabinet appointments, chargeships and for- 
eign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful 
exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy 
hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attract- 
ive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction 
that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to 
give up the charming hope ; but with greedier anxiety 
they rush about him, sustain him, and give him march- 
es, triumphal entries, and receptions beyond what 
even in the days of his highest prosperity they could 
have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, 
nobody has ever expected me to be President. In 
my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that 
any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disad- 
vantages, all taken together, that the Republicans la- 
bor under. We have to fight this battle upon princi- 
ple, and upon principle alone. I am, in a certain 
sense, made the standard-bearer in behalf of the Re- 
publicans. I was made so merely because there had 
to be some one so placed — I being in no wise prefer- 
able to any other one of the twenty-five — perhaps a 
hundred, we have in the Republican ranks. Then I 
say I wish it to be distinctly understood and borne in 

mind, that we have to fight this battle without many 
4 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

— perhaps without any — of the external aids which 
are brought to bear against us. So I hope those with 
whom I am surrounded have principle enough to nerve 
themselves for the task and leave nothing undone that 
can be fairly done, to bring about the right result." 

Two years before, Mr. Lincoln had used even stron- 
ger terms in contrasting himself and his antagonist. 
In 1856 he said: "Twenty-two years ago, Judge 
Douglas and I first became acquainted ; we were both 
young men — he a trifle younger than I. Even then 
we were both ambitious, I perhaps quite as much as 
he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure 
— a flat failure. With him, it has been one of splen- 
did success. His name fills the nation, and it is 
not unknown in foreign lands. I affect no contempt 
for the high eminence he has reached. So reached 
that the oppressed of my species might have shared 
with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that 
eminence than wear the richest crown that ever press- 
ed a monarch's brow." 

Mr. Lincoln's exact position on the emancipation 
question at this time, is an interesting illustration of 
his firm adherence to principle, and at the same time 
of his extreme caution in touching established laws, 
and his natural tendency to give voice to the average 
public sentiment of his day, rather than to go beyond 
it, or to reprove that sentiment for not going further. 
He averred over and over again, that he was " not in 
favor of negro citizenship ;" but he said " there is no 
reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to 
all the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence — the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of 



THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 47 

happiness. In the right to eat the bread without the 
leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he 
is niy equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the 
equal of every other man." 

The same primary granite substratum of moral 
right, of everlasting justice, underlies all these speeches. 
It crops out here and there, in passages, a specimen 
of which is worth quoting, not merely for the sake of 
their aptness then or now ; but also as excellent pat- 
terns for the application of moral principles to politi- 
cal practices — a lesson peculiarly important in a re- 
public, simply because its diligent employment is the 
sole possible basis of national strength and happiness. 
In the debate at Quincy, October 13th, Mr. Lincoln 
stated a whole code of political ethics, along with its 
application to the case in hand, in one paragraph, as 
follows : 

" We have in this nation this element of domestic 
slavery. It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is 
a disturbing element. It is the opinion of all the 
great men who have expressed an opinion upon it, 
that it is a dangerous element. We keep up a contro- 
versy in regard to it. That controversy necessarily 
springs from difference of opinion, and if we can learn 
exactly — can reduce to the lowest elements — what that 
difference of opinion is, we perhaps shall be better 
prepared for discussing the different systems of policy 
that we would propose in regard to that disturbing 
element. I suggest that the difference of opinion, 
reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the dif- 
ference between the men who think slavery a wrong 
and those who do not think it a wrong. The Repub- 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

lican party think it wrong — we think it is a moral, a 
social and a political wrong. We think it is a wrong 
not confining itself merely to the persons or the States 
where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its tendency, 
to say the least, that it extends itself to the existence 
of the whole nation. Because we think it wrong, we 
propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a 
wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in 
so far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and 
so deal with it that in the run of time there may be 
some promise of an end to it. We have a due regard 
to the actual presence of it amongst us and the diffi- 
culties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, 
and all the Constitutional obligations thrown about it. 
I suppose that in reference both to its actual existence 
in the nation, and to our Constitutional obligations, 
we have no right at all to disturb it in the States 
where it exists, and we profess that we have no more 
inclination to disturb it than we have the right to do 
it. We go further than that ; we don't propose to 
disturb it where, in one instance, we think the Con- 
stitution would permit us. We think the Constitution 
would permit us to disturb it in the District of Colum- 
bia. Still we do not propose to do that, unless it 
should be in terms which I don't suppose the nation 
is very likely soon to agree to — the terms of making 
the emancipation gradual and compensating the un- 
willing owners. Where we suppose we have the Con- 
stitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference to 
the actual existence of the institution and the diffi- 
culties thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil 
so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the 
policy that shall restrict it to its present limits." 



THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 49 

Still more sharply and strongly he stated the ques- 
tion in the last debate, at Alton, as simply this : Is 
Slavery wrong ? 

" That is the real issue. That is the issue that will 
continue in this country when these poor tongues of 
Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the 
eternal struggle between these two principles — right 
and wrong — throughout the world. They are the two 
principles that have stood face to face from the begin- 
ning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. 
The one is the common right of humanity and the 
other the divine right of kings. It is the same prin- 
ciple, in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the 
same spirit that says, " You work and toil and earn 
bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in what shape it 
comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks 
to bestride the people of his own nation and live by 
the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an 
apology for enslaving another race, it is the same 
tyrannical principle." 

With equal force he often exposed and rebuked the 
moral levity shown by his opponent — his affectation of 
indifference to all principle, his supercilious dazzling 
contempt of moral distinctions. In his last speech at 
Alton, he very fully reviewed the whole question, and 
Mr. Douglas' individual position before the country, 
with great breadth and power. 

There was as striking a contrast between the exter- 
nals of the two champions, as between their political 
doctrines. Douglas went pompously up and down the 
land, with special trains of railroad cars, bands of mu- 
sic, long processions, banners, cannon firing, and all 



50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the flourish and gaudy show of a triumphing conquer- 
or ; and he is said to have paid away half his fortune 
in securing this fatal victory. But Mr. Lincoln went 
about almost as frugally, as plainly, as quietly, as if he 
had been on one of his accustomed legal circuits, and 
reflected with a queer astonishment upon the trifling 
sum that he did actually expend. He said to a friend 
after the campaign was over, " I don't believe I have 
expended in this canvass one cent less than Five Hun- 
dred Dollars in cash ! " He sometimes good hu- 
mor edly alluded to these demonstrations. ' 'Auxiliary to 
these main points," he says, u to be sure, are their 
thunderings of cannon, their marching and music, their 
fizzle-gigs and fire works ; but I will not waste time 
with them, they are but the little trappings of the 
campaign." Mr. Townsend, a picturesque writer, thus 
contrasts the bearing of the two men: "Douglas was 
uneasily arrogant in Lincoln's presence ; the latter, 
never sensitive nor flurried, so grew by his impertur- 
bability that when he reached the' White House, Mr. 
Douglas was less surprised than anybody else. The 
great senatorial campaign, in which they figured to- 
gether, is remembered by every Springfielder. Doug- 
las, with his powerful voice and facile energy, went 
into it under full steam. Lincoln began lucidly and 
cautiously. When they came out of it, Douglas was 
worn down with rage and hoarseness, and Lincoln was 
fresher than ever. He prepared all the speeches of 
this campaign by silent meditation, sitting or lying 
alone, studying the flies on the ceiling. " The best evi- 
dence of his superiority in this debate is the fact that 
the Republicans circulated both sets of speeches as a 



THE DEBATES WITH DOUGLAS. 51 

campaign document in 1860, but Mr. Douglas's friends 
refused to do so. 

And Mr. Arnold, a personal friend of Mr. Lincoln's, 
attributes to Mr. Lincoln just that sort of superiority 
that comes from a consciousness of being on the right 
side and of having an antagonist in whose attitude 
there is reason for contempt. "He had one advan- 
tage," says Mr. Arnold, "over Douglas, he was always 
good humored ; he had always an apt and happy story 
for illustration, and while Douglas was sometimes ir- 
ritable, Lincoln never lost his temper." And Mr. 
Arnold says that when Lincoln and Douglas came to 
Chicago together just after the close of the seven de- 
bates, " Lincoln was in perfect health, his face bronzed 
by the prairie suns, but looking and moving like a 
trained athlete. His voice was clearer, stronger and 
better than when he began the canvass. Douglas was 
physically much broken. He was so hoarse that he 
could hardly articulate, and was entirely unintelligible 
in an ordinary tone." 

But the circumstance that shows most clearly of all, 
how entirely Mr. Lincoln saw over, and through, and 
beyond his adversary, both as statesman and politician, 
how entirely he managed him, wielded him, used 
him, is the fearful grip into which he put the "Little 
Giant" on the question of the conflict between "Pop- 
ular Sovereignty" and the Dred Scott decision. In 
return for a series of questions by Mr. Douglas, Mr. 
Lincoln, having answered them all categorically, pre- 
pared certain others to put to Mr. Douglas ; and of 
these one was : 

" Can the people of a United States Territory, in 



52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the 
United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to 
the formation of a State Constitution ? " 

When Mr. Lincoln consulted a friend upon this set 
of questions, the friend remonstrated against this one ; 
saying in substance, "In answer, Mr. Douglas must 
either accept the Dred Scott decision as binding, 
which would lose him the election to the Senate in 
consequence of the popular feeling in Illinois against 
it, or else that he must assert that his doctrine of " squat- 
ter sovereignty " would enable the territory to keep 
slavery out, by "unfriendly legislation," contrary to the 
Dred Scott decision. And this," urged the friend, "he 
will do ; it will satisfy Illinois, and give Douglas the 
senatorship. You are only placing the step for him 
to rise upon." 

" That may be," said Mr. Lincoln, with a shrewd 
look, " but if he takes that shoot he never can be Presi- 
dent." This meant, that while the doctrine of legislat- 
ing slavery out of a territory might satisfy Illinois, it 
would be odious and inadmissible to the whole South, 
and that it would therefore render Douglas' election 
to the Presidency impossible. And it came to pass 
exactly as Mr. Lincoln foretold at this time, and as 
he told "Billy" when he returned home at the end 
of the canvass. One of Mr. Lincoln's characteristic 
sentences afterwards summed all the contradiction of 
Douglas' position, in the statement that it was " de- 
claring that a thing may be lawfully driven away from 
a place where it has a lawful right to go." 

These seven debates were the most widely known 
of Mr. Lincoln's labors in this campaign, but he made 



COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH. 53 

about fifty other speeches in different parts of the 
State. 

The result of this celebrated canvass was to return 
Douglas to the Senate, although the vote of the peo- 
ple was in favor of Lincoln. The Legislative districts 
in the State had been so arranged by the Demo- 
cratic party as to secure their majority in the Legisla- 
ture. But even if the popular majority had been 
with Douglas, Mr. Lincoln had won. He set out to 
lose the State ; he set out to carry the nation ; and he 
did it. It was the foresight of the statesman, con- 
tending with the cunning of the politician. It was 
part of the victory that he who really los.t thought he 
had won. Mr. Herndon, Mr. Lincoln's law partner, 
told afterwards how Mr. Lincoln came home and said, 
"Billy, I knew I should miss the place, when I com- 
peted for it. This defeat will make me President." 

In the period between this canvass and the Presi- 
dential nomination at Chicago, Mr. Lincoln, while at 
work in his profession, did good service in the cause 
of freedom in several of the States, making a number 
of effective speeches in Ohio, Kansas, and particularly 
in New England and New York. His contest with 
Douglas had probably already made Mr. Lincoln the 
second choice of large numbers of Republicans for 
the nomination of 1860. His great speech at Cooper 
Institute in February, 1860, confirmed this choice, and 
enlarged those numbers. 

The invitation which resulted in his great Cooper 
Institute speech was originally to give a lecture in 
Plymouth Church, in Brooklyn, and he was to receive 
$200 for it. After some delay, at last he agreed 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

to speak on February 27th; but the three young men 
who had organized the course, thought the time late 
in the season, and began to fear that they would lose 
money. It sounds curious enough now, to think of a 
fear lest a speech by Mr. Lincoln should not refund 
$350 expenses, but so they thought. A political 
friend of his who had negotiated the engagement, at 
last assumed one fourth of the risk, and with a good 
deal of trouble, managed to have the speech at Coop- 
er Institute, instead of Brooklyn. Attempts were 
vainly made to induce one and then another Repub- 
lican club to assume the risk of the engagement. 
The New York Times, in announcing the lecture, kind- 
ly spoke of the speaker as "a lawyer who had some 
local reputation in Illinois." 

The Cooper Institute speech was prepared with 
much care, and was a production of very great power 
of logic, history and political statement. It consisted 
of an exposition of the true doctrines of the founders 
of our nation on the question of slavery, and of the 
position of the two parties of the day on the same 
question. It was alive and luminous throughout with 
the resolute and lofty and uncompromising morality 
on principle, which had colored all his debates with 
Douglas, and made a very deep impression upon the 
audience present, and upon the far greater audience 
that read it afterwards. 

Its close was very powerful. After showing that 
the demands of the South were summed up in the re- 
quirement that the North should call slavery right in- 
stead of wrong, and should then join the south in 
acting accordingly, he added: 



COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH. 55 

"If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand 
by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be 
diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances 
wherewith we are so industriously plied and bela- 
bored — contrivances such as groping for some mid- 
dle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as 
the search for a man who should be neither a living 
man nor a dead man — such as a policy of " don't 
care" on a question about which all true men do care 
— such as Union appeals, beseeching true Union men 
to yield to disunionists, reversing the Divine rule, and 
calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repent- 
ance — such as invocations of Washington, imploring 
men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what 
Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from 
our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened 
from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, 
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that 
right makes might, and in that faith let us, to the 
end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it." 

The words are singularly plain, they are nakedly home- 
ly. But the thoughts are very noble and very mighty. 

At the close of the speech, the same friend who had 
engineered it, made a few remarks, in which he proph- 
esied. He said, "One of three gentlemen will be our 
standard bearer in the Presidential contest of this year ; 
the distinguished Senator from New York — Mr. Sew- 
ard ; the late able and accomplished Governor of Ohio, 
Mr. Chase, or the unknown knight who entered the 
political list, against the Bois Guilbert of democracy, 
Stephen A. Douglas, on the prairies of Illinois, in 
1858, and unhorsed him — Abraham Lincoln. 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The narrator adds, " Some friends joked me after 
the meeting, as not being a good prophet. The lec- 
ture was over ; all the expenses were paid ; I was 
handed by the gentlemen interested, the sum of $4.25 
as my share of the profits." It is worth adding that 
Mr. Lincoln observed to the same gentleman, after his 
subsequent tour further eastward, " when I was East, 
several gentlemen made about the same remark to me 
that you did to-day about the Presidency ; they 
thought my chances were about equal to the best." 

The story of the nomination at Chicago, of the 
election, of the perilous journey to Washington, need 
not be repeated. While the nominating convention 
was sitting, Mr. Lincoln's friends telegraphed to him 
that in order to be nominated he needed the votes of 
two of the delegations, and that to secure these, he 
must promise that if elected the leaders of those del- 
egations should be made members of his Cabinet. He 
telegraphed at once back again ; "I authorize no bar- 
gains and will be bound by none." The adoption of 
i those ten words as a rule would go very far to purify 
the whole field of political party action. 

Little did the convention that nominated Abraham 
Lincoln for President, know what they were doing. 
Little did the honest, fatherly, patriotic man, who stood 
in his simplicity on the platform at Springfield, asking 
the prayers of his townsmen and receiving their 
pledges to remember him, foresee how awfully he was 
to need those prayers, the prayers of all this nation 
and the prayers of all the working, suffering common 
people throughout the world. God's hand was upon 
him with a visible protection, saving first from the 



HIS COURAGE. 57 

danger of assassination at Baltimore, and bringing 
him safely to our national capital. 

Perhaps the imperturbable cool courage of Mr. Lin- 
coln was the trait in him least appreciated in propor- 
tion to his share of it. He promptly and unhesitat- 
ingly risked his life to keep his Philadelphia appoint- 
ment on the way to Washington, filling his programme, 
because it was his duty, without any variance for as- 
sassins. It should be here recorded, by the way, that 
the story that he fled from Harrisburg, disguised in a 
Scotch cap and cloak, which made so much noise in 
the country at the time, was a forgery, devised by a 
disreputable reporter. Mr. Lincoln never used any 
disguises, and it would have required more than one 
u Scotch cap " to bring his six feet four down to an 
average height. 

He was so kind-hearted, so peaceable, so averse, 
either to cause or to witness controversy or wrath, that 
only the extremest need would force him to the point 
of wrath and of fighting. But when the need was 
real, the wrath and the fight came out. Whether 
moral or physical courage, upon a real demand for it, 
it never failed. On his flat boat trip to New Orleans 
in his youth, he and his mate, armed only with sticks 
of wood, beat off seven negro marauders who at- 
tacked and would have robbed their boat. When 
clerk in a country store he seized, flung down and sub- 
dued a bully who was insolent to some women, and 
what is more, the beaten bully became his friend. He 
once, alone, by suddenly dropping from a scuttle down 
upon the platform, kept off a gang of rowdies who 
were about to hustle his friend Col. Baker off the 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

stand. He and Baker once, with no others, escorted 
to the hotel, a speaker who was threatened with vio- 
lence by a Democratic crowd whom he had offended. 
When some Irishmen at Springfield once undertook 
to take possession of the poll and restrict the voting 
to their friends, Lincoln, hearing of it, stepped into 
the first store, seized an axe helve, and marched alone 
through the turbulent crowd up to the poll, opening 
the road as he went ; and alone he kept the ballot-box 
free and safe until the foolish crowd gave up their 
plan. His anger sometimes — though very seldom — 
flamed up at ill usage of himself ; but never so hotly 
as at ill usage to others. When a poor negro citizen 
of Illinois was imprisoned at New Orleans, simply for 
being a free negro from outside of Louisiana, and was 
about to be sold into slavery, to pay jail fees, Mr. Lin- 
coln found that the Governor of Illinois could not 
help the poor fellow. When the fact became plain, 
he jumped up and swore, " By the Almighty," he 
said, " I'll have that negro back, or I'll have a twenty 
years' agitation in Illinois, until the Governor can do 
something in the premises !" Somebody sent money 
and set the man free ; or else the twenty years' agita- 
tion would have begun, and finished too. An officer, 
a worthless fellow, after being dismissed and repeatedly 
trying to get back into the army, at last insolently 
told President Lincoln, "I see you are fully deter- 
mined not to do me justice." Now this was just what 
he was determined to do him ; and in righteous anger 
he arose, laid down his papers, collared the fellow, 
walked him to the door and flung him out, saying, 
" Sir, I give you fair warning, never to show yourself in 
this room again. I can bear censure, but not insult!" 



HIS STATE PAPERS. 59 

In Mr. Lincoln's administration, the world lias seen 
and wondered at the greatest sign and marvel of our 
day, to wit, a plain working man of the people, with 
no more culture, instruction or education than any 
such working man may obtain for himself, called on 
to conduct the passage of a great nation through a 
crisis involving the destinies of the whole world. The 
eyes of princes, nobles, aristocrats, of dukes, earls, 
scholars, statesmen, warriors, all turned on the plain 
backwoodsman, with his simple sense, his imperturb- 
able simplicity, his determined self-reliance, his imprac- 
ticable and incorruptible honesty, as he sat amid the 
war of conflicting elements, with unpretending stead- 
iness, striving to guide the national ship through a 
channel at whose perils the world's oldest statesmen 
stood aghast. The brilliant courts of Europe levelled 
their opera glasses at the phenomenon. Fair ladies 
saw that he had horny hands and disdained white 
gloves ; dapper diplomatists were shocked at his sys- 
tem of etiquette ; but old statesmen, who knew the 
terrors of that passage, were wiser than court ladies 
and dandy diplomatists, and watched him with a fear- 
ful curiosity, simply asking, " Will that awkward old 
backwoodsman really get that ship through ? If he 
does, it will be time for us to look about us." Sooth 
to say, our own politicians were somewhat shocked 
with his State papers at first. " Why not let us make 
them a little more conventional, and file them to a 
classical pattern ?" " No," was his reply, " I shall write 
them myself. The people icill understand them" 
" But this or that form of expression is not elegant, 
nor classical." " The people will understand it" was 



60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

his invariable reply. And whatever may be said of 
his State papers, as compared with the diplomatic 
standards, it has been a fact that they have always 
been wonderfully well understood by the people, and 
that since the time of Washington, the State papers 
of no President have more controlled the popular 
mind. And one reason for this is, that they have been 
informal and undiplomatic. They have more resem- 
bled a father's talks to his children than a State paper. 
And they have had that relish and smack of the soil, 
that appeal to the simple human heart and head, which 
is a greater power in writing than the most artful cler- 
ices of rhetoric. Lincoln might well say with the 
apostle, "But though I be rude in speech yet not in 
knowledge, but we have been thoroughly made man- 
ifest among you in all things." His rejection of what 
is called fine writing, was as deliberate as St. Paul's, 
and for the same reason — because he felt that he was 
speaking on a subject which must be made clear to 
the lowest intellect, though it should fail to captivate 
the highest. But we say of Lincoln's writings, that 
for all true, manly purposes of writing, there are pas- 
sages in his State papers that could not be better put 
— they are absolutely perfect. They are brief, con- 
densed, intense, and with a power of insight and ex- 
pression which make them worthy to be inscribed in 
letters of gold. Such are some passages of the cele- 
brated letter to the Springfield convention, especially 
that masterly one where he compares the conduct of 
the patriotic and loyal blacks with that of the treach- 
erous and disloyal whites. No one can read this let- 
ter and especially the passage mentioned, without feel- 



his life's lesson. 61 

ing the influence of a mind both strong and generous. 
"Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope 
it will come soon and come to stay ; and so come as 
to be worth the keeping in all future time. It will 
then have been proved that among freemen there can 
be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, 
and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose 
their case and pay the cost. And then there will be 
some black men who can remember that with silent 
tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well- 
poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this 
great consummation, while I fear there will be some 
white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart 
and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it." 

The lesson of Mr. Lincoln's career as President, is 
a manifold one. He was in a strangely full and close 
manner the exponent, the representative, the federal 
head, the voice, the plenary agent, of the people of 
the United States. As such, his life teaches what the 
war teaches, to wit ; the strength and the magnificent 
morality of an intelligent people, trained in self-control, 
in thought, in the doctrines of justice and freedom, 
and in the fear of God. 

As one man's life, the life of Mr. Lincoln after his 
election is simply the picture over again, on a gigan- 
tic scale, in stronger colors, in bolder relief, of the 
same courage, devotion, strength, industry, energy, 
sense, decision, kindness, caution, instinctive feeling 
of what was right and what was practicable, and de- 
liberate execution of it, that had marked his career 
before, as the political leader in a great state contro- 
versy, and as a laborious lawyer at the bar. As he 
5 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

mounted upon a higher plane of action, his views be- 
came enlarged and elevated. Especially is it noticea- 
ble how as President, he was very much more open 
and specific in avowing an immediate dependence up- 
on help higher than man's, in doing the work before 
him. Mr. Lincoln was naturally inclined to religious 
feelings. His habit of considering all the affairs of 
life from the religious point of view, at the tribunal 
of the laws of God, is clearly traceable in his private 
history and even in his political campaigns. He was 
not obtrusive nor unreasonable however in avowals 
of this feeling. It would have been out of place to 
request the prayers of his fellow citizens during the 
debates with Douglas, almost as much as to ask the 
prayers of the jury while arguing a case. But 
while placed at the head of his nation, during the 
vastest peril of its existence — while occupying the 
most prominent, the most powerful, the most respon- 
sible, the most difficult, and the most dangerous posi- 
tion upon the whole round world — while at the very 
front of the very vanguard of humanity in the great 
battle which was deciding whether good or evil should 
overcome — in such a position, no avowals of the need 
of Divine aid, no repetition of the consciousness of 
that need, no requests for the sympathy and the help 
of all good men's prayers, could be too frequent or 
too free. This profound sense of human weakness 
and of God's strength, and a distinct sentiment of 
mournful foreboding, give the whole coloring to the 
brief address in which he bade good bye to his neigh- 
bors at Springfield, at setting out for Washington in 
1861. 



HIS RELIGIOUS FEELINGS. 63 

This habit of religious feeling, and the avowal of it, 
remained a very marked one during all Mr. Lincoln's 
Presidency. Subordinate to this, the acts of his offic- 
ial life, his written and spoken utterances, and his 
personal conduct, were mainly marked by solicitous 
and extreme sense of duty, unfailing resolution, un- 
erring tact and wisdom, and a kindness and patience 
entirely unparalleled in the history of governments. 
These traits were often hidden by his quaint modes of 
expression, by the wonderful flow of humorous anec- 
dotes which he so constantly used in arguing, in an- 
swering; in evading, or for entertainment ; and by his 
confirmed habit of arguing all questions against him- 
self, against his own views, before coming to a con- 
clusion. These externals often concealed him, often 
occasioned him to be misunderstood, distrusted, and 
opposed. It was only as time passed on, and his pub- 
lic acts gradually formed themselves into his his- 
tory, that it was possible for those broad and massive 
characteristics to be seen in a just perspective. Now 
however, they are visible throughout all his life, 
whether traced in anecdote, in speech, in state papers, 
in cabinet debates, in intercourse with the representa- 
tives of bodies of the people, or in executive orders 
and acts. 

Of all these traits, Mr. Lincoln's kindness was un- 
questionably the rarest, the most wonderful. It may 
be doubted whether any human being ever lived 
whose whole nature was so perfectly sweet with the 
readiness to do kind actions ; so perfectly free from 
even the capacity of revenge. He could not even 
leave a pig in distress. He once on circuit, drove 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

past a pig, stuck fast in a mud hole. Having on a 
suit of new clothes, he felt unable to afford thern for 
the pig, but after going two miles, he could not stand 
it, turned and drove back, made a platform of rails, 
helped out the pig, spoiled his new clothes, and 
then went contentedly about his business. He used 
to help his poor clients with money — a ridiculous 
thino- in a lawyer. He was quite as helpless about 
traitors and deserters and criminals, as about pigs ; even 
when pardoning or non-retaliation was actually doing 
harm. The beseechings and tears of women, the sight 
of a little child, even a skilful picture of the sorrow 
of a scoundrel's friends, was almost certain to gain 
whatever favor they sought. It really sometimes seemed 
as if he was tenderer of individual lives than of mul- 
titudes of them, so nearly impossible was it for him 
to pronounce sentence of death or to forbear the gift 
of life. His doorkeeper had standing orders never to 
delay from one day to another any message asking for 
the saving of life. He undoubtedly did harm by giv- 
ing life to deserters, and thus weakening army disci- 
pline. He heard a child cry in his anteroom one day, 
and calling his usher, had the woman that carried' the 
child shown in. She had been waiting three days, by 
some mischance. Her husband was to be shot. * She 
stated her case ; the pardon was at once granted ; she 
came out of the office praying and weeping ; and the 
old usher, touching her shawl, told her who had really 
saved her husband's life. "Madam," said he, "the 
baby did it." 

One of his generals once urgently remonstrated 
with him for rendering desertion safe, though it was 



HIS KINDNESS. 65 

seriously weakening the army. " Mr. General," said 
Mr. Lincoln, "there are already too many weeping wid- 
ows in the United States. For God's sake don't ask 
me to add to the number, for I won't do it." Even 
to put a stop to the unutterable horrors which were 
slowly murdering our brave men in the rebel prisons, 
he could not retaliate. He said, " I can never, never 
starve men like that. Whatever others may say or do, 
I never can, and I never will, be accessory to such 
treatment of human beings." Once, after the massa- 
'cre at Fort Pillow, he pledged himself in a public 
speech that there should be a retaliation. But that 
pledge he could not keep, and he did not. 

His perfectly sweet kindness of feeling was as inex- 
haustible towards the rebels as such, as towards dumb 
beasts, or the poor and unfortunate of his own loyal 
people, and it was shown as clearly in his state papers 
and speeches as in any private act or word. That 
sentiment, and one other — the unconditional deter- 
mination to adhere to the doctrines of the Declaration 
of Independence and to do his sworn official duty — 
colored the series of speeches which he made on his 
way to Washington. At Philadelphia, where he was 
especially impressed with associations about the old In- 
dependence Hall, he said, speaking of that edifice, 
and standing within the old Hall itself: 

" All the political sentiments I entertain have been 
drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from 
the sentiments which originated in and were given to 
the world from this hall. I have never had a feeling, 
politically, that did not spring from the sentiments 
embodied in the Declaration of Independence." 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

Then lie referred to the doctrine of freedom in that 
instrument ; and he said : 

"But if this country can not be saved without giving 
up that principle, I was about to say I would rather 
be assassinated in this spot than surrender it. * * * 
I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, 
and if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by." 

These references to assassination and death, were no 
casual nourishes of oratory. They were deliberate 
defiances of the fate which had already been de- 
nounced against the speaker, in public and in private, 
which continued to be threatened during all the rest 
of his life, and which finally actually befel him, but 
the fear of which never made him turn pale nor waver 
in his duty. He began as soon as he was nominated, 
to receive anonymous letters from the South threaten- 
ing him with death. They became so frequent that 
he kept a separate file of them. They continued to 
come, up to the year of his death. The first one or 
two, he said, made him " a little uncomfortable ; " but 
afterwards he only filed them. The train on which 
he left home for the East, was to have been thrown 
off the track. A hand grenade was hidden in one 
of the cars. An association was known to exist at 
Baltimore for the express purpose of killing him. 
When therefore he spoke as he did at Philadelphia, it 
was doubtless with a feeling that some one concerned 
in these plans was probably hearing him, and under- 
standing him. It was, no doubt, at the same time a 
sort of vow, taken upon himself under the feelings 
aroused by the birth-place of the Declaration which 
he had so often and so well defended. Whether a 



THE FIRST INAUGURAL. 67 

challenge, a vow, or a mere statement of principle, lie 
kept his word. He lived by it, and he died by it. 

The same mixture of firmness and kindness appears 
in the First Inaugural, and in this document there is 
also another most characteristic element ; — -circumspect 
adherence to the Constitution as he understood it, and 
most remarkable care and skill in the language used 
to interpret law, or to announce his own conclusions 
or purposes. Lover of freedom as he was, and be- 
liever in the rights of man, he had already been inva- 
riably careful not to demand from the masses of men 
whom he sought to influence, more than they could be 
expected to give. Now, he went even further. He 
expressly and clearly avowed his intention to execute 
all that he had sworn, even the laws most distasteful 
to any freeman. In speaking of the crisis of the mo- 
ment, and after setting forth his doctrine of national 
sovereignty and an unbroken Union, he promised to 
maintain it as far as he could, and added : 

" Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my 
part ; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, un- 
less my rightful masters, the American people, shall 
withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative 
manner direct the contrary." 

Then, as if to avert ill feeling if possible : 

"I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but 
only as the declared purpose of the Union, that it will 
constitutionally defend and maintain itself." 

Then, with careful adherence to the mildest terms 
possible — could anything be a more peaceful assertion 
of national right than the simple "hold, occupy and 
possess"? — he says what the nation will do: 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

" In doing this there need be no bloodshed or vio- 
lence, and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon 
the national authority. The power confided to me 
will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property 
and places belonging to the government, and to col- 
lect the duties and imposts ; but beyond what may be 
necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, 
no using of force against or among the people any- 
where." 

The remainder of the Inaugural is just such a kindly, 
homely, earnest, sincere, straight-forward appeal to 
the South, as he might have made in a country court- 
house in Illinois, "taking off his coat, leaning upon 
the rail of the jury box, and singling out a leading 
juryman and addressing him in a conversational tone." 
Having stated the case, and once more barely repeated 
that it was " his duty to administer the present gov- 
ernment as it came to his hands, and to transmit it 
unimpaired by him to his successor," he then quietly 
but powerfully appeals to his own two life-long trusts, 
God Almighty, and the free people of America. He 
asks : 

" Why should there not be a patient confidence in 
the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any bet- 
ter or equal hope in the world ? In our present dif- 
ferences, is either party without faith of being in the 
right ? If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his 
eternal truth and justice, be on your side of the North, 
or on yours of the South, that truth and that justice 
will surely prevail, by the judgment of the great tri- 
bunal of the American people." 

And the final paragraphs are sad and heavy with his 



THE FIRST INAUGURAL. 69 

unutterable longings and yearnings for peace ; so that 
the words, plain and simple as they are, are full of 
deep and melancholy music : 

" You can have no conflict without being yourselves 
the aggressors. You have no oath registered in 
heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have 
the most solemn one, to 'preserve, protect and de- 
fend' it. 

I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 
The mystic cord of memory, stretching from every 
battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely 
they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 1 ' 

As the war went on, the same unwavering decision, 
the same caution and kindness marked the whole ac- 
tion of the Executive. Especially were these traits 
exhibited in his dealings with the main question at 
issue, that of slavery. 

On this point he bore a pressure such as it is safe to 
say no mortal son of earth ever bore before or since. 
The interests of the great laboring, suffering classes 
that go to make up human nature, were all at this pe- 
riod of history condensed into one narrow channel, 
like that below Niagara where the waters of all the 
great lakes are heaped up in ridges, and seem, in 
Scripture language, to "utter their voices and lift up 
their hands on high." Like the course of those heavy 
waters the great cause weltered into a place where 
its course resembled that sullen whirlpool below the 



70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

falls where the awful waters go round and round in 
blindly, dizzy masses, and seem with dumb tossings 
and dark agonies to seek in vain for a clear, open 
channel. In this dread vortex, from time to time are 
seen whirling helplessly the bodies of drowned men, 
fragments of wrecked boats splintered and shattered, 
and trees torn to ghastly skeletons, which from time 
to time dart up from the whirling abyss with a sort 
of mad, impatient despair. 

So we can all remember when the war had strug- 
gled on a year or two — when a hundred thousand 
men, the life and light and joy of as many families, 
who entered it warm with hope and high in aspira- 
tion, were all lying cold and low, and yet without the 
least apparent progress towards a result — when the 
resistance only seemed to have become wider, deeper, 
more concentrated, better organized, by all that awful 
waste of the best treasures of the nation ; then was 
the starless night — the horror of the valley of the 
shadow of death. Above, darkness' filled with whis- 
perings, and jibes, and sneers of traitor fiends ; on one 
side a pit, on the other a quagmire, and in the gloom 
all faces gathered blackness, and even friends and par- 
tisans looked strangely on each other. Confidence be- 
gan to be shaken. Each separate party blamed the 
other as they wandered in the darkness. It was one 
of the strange coincidences which show the eternal 
freshness of Scripture language in relation to human 
events, that the church lesson from the Old Testament 
which was read in the churches the Sunday after the 
attack on Sumter, was the prediction of exactly such 
a conflict: 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 71 

"Prepare war, wake up the might)' men, let all the 
men of war draw near ; let them come up : 

Beat your plough-shares into swords, and your prun- 
ing-hooks into spears : let the weak say, I am strong. 

Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and 
gather yourselves together round about : thither cause 
thy mighty ones to come down, Lord. 

Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe : the 
press is full, the fats overflow ; for their wickedness is 
great. 

Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision : for 
the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. 

The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the 
stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also 
shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jeru- 
salem ; and the heavens and the earth shall shake : 
but the Lord will he the hope of his people, and the 
strength of the children of Israel. So shall ye know 
that I am the Lord your God." 

The repeated defeats, disasters, and distresses that 
had come upon the Union cause stirred the conscience 
of all the religious portion of the community. They 
remembered the parallels in the Old Testament where 
the armies of Israel were turned back before the 
heathen, because they cherished within themselves 
some accursed thing — they began to ask whether the 
Achan who had stolen the wedge of gold and Baby- 
lonish vest in our midst was not in truth the cause 
why God would not go forth with our armies ! and 
the pressure upon Lincoln to end the strife by declar- 
ing emancipation, became every day more stringent ; 
at the same time the pressure of every opposing party 
became equally intense, and Lincoln by his peculiar 



72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

nature and habits, must listen to all, and take time to 
ponder and weigh all. In consequence there was a 
time when he pleased nobody. Each party was in- 
censed at the degree of attention he gave to the other. 
He might say, in the language of the old prophet, at 
this time, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast 
borne me a man of strife, and a man of contention 
to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, 
nor men have lent to me on usury ; yet every one of 
them doth curse me." He was, like the great Mas- 
ter whom he humbly followed, despised and reject- 
ed of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with 
grief; we hid, as it were, our faces from him, he 
was despised, and we esteemed him not. Like the 
poor, dumb, suffering, down-trodden classes for whom 
he stood, he had no prestige of personal advantages, 
or of that culture which comes from generations of 
wealth and ease. His method of thought and expres- 
sion had not the stamp of any old aristocratic tradi- 
tion. He was a sign upon the earth — the sign and 
the leader of a new order of events in which the 
power and the prestige should be in the hands of the 
plain, simple common people, and not in those of 
privileged orders. But the time had not yet come, 
and now was their hour of humiliation, and while in 
England the poor operatives of Manchester bravely 
and manfully bore starvation caused by want of cot- 
ton, rather than ask their government to break the 
blockade and get it for them ; while the poor silk 
weavers of Lyons, and the poorer classes all over Eu- 
rope trembled, and hoped, and sympathised with the 
struggling cause and its unfashionable leader — all the 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 73 

great, gay, successful, fashionable world went the other 
way. Punch had his jolly caricatures of Lincoln's 
long, thin face, and anxious perplexities, and the car- 
icatures of Paris were none the less merry. Even in 
America there was a time when some of his most 
powerful friends doubted his fitness for his position, 
and criticisms filled the columns of every newspaper. 
In Washington, every fop and every fool felt at liberty 
to make a jest at the expense of his want of dignity, 
and his personal awkwardness. He was freely called 
an ape, a satyr, a stupid blockhead, for even the ass 
can kick safely and joyfully at a lion in a net. Even 
his cabinet and best friends said nothing for him, and 
kept an ominous and gloomy silence. 

Lincoln knew all this, and turned it over in the 
calm recesses of his mind, with a quiet endurance, 
gilded at times by a gleam of the grim, solemn humor 
peculiar to himself. "I cannot make generals," he 
said once, "I would if I could." At another, to an 
important man who had been pressing some of his 
own particular wisdom upon him, "Perhaps you'd like 
to try to run the machine yourself." Somebody gave 
him a series of powerful criticisms which a distinguished 
writer had just poured forth on him. "I read them 
all through," he said quaintly, "and then I said to 
myself, Well, Abraham Lincoln, are you a man, or are 
you a dog?" 

No man in the great agony suffered more or deeper, 
but it was with a dry, weary, patient pain, that many 
mistook for insensibility. " Whichever way it ends," 
he said to the writer, on one occasion, "I have the 
imoression that I shan't last long after it's over." 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

After the dreadful repulse at Fredericksburg, lie is 
reported to have said, u If there is a man out of hell 
that suffers more than I do, I pity him." In those 
dark days, his heavy eyes and worn and weary air 
told how our reverses wore upon him, and yet there 
was a never failing fund of patience at bottom that some- 
times rose to the surface in bubbles of quaint sayings or 
a story that forced a laugh even from himself. The hu- 
mor of Lincoln was the oil that lubricated the other- 
wise dry and wiry machinery of his mind. The pow- 
er of looking at men and things with reference to 
their humorous side, enabled him to bear without 
irritation many things in the political joltings and 
jarrings of his lot, which would have driven a more 
nervous man frantic. It is certainly a great advantage 
to be so made that one can laugh at times when cry- 
ing will do no good, and Lincoln not only had his own 
laugh in the darkest days, but the wherewithal to 
bring a laugh from a weary neighbor. His jests and 
stories helped off many a sorry hour, and freshened 
the heart of his hearer for another pull in the galling 
harness. 

He saw through other men who thought all the 
while they were instructing or enlightening him, with 
a sort of dry, amused patience. He allowed the most 
tedious talker to prose to him, the most shallow and 
inflated to advise him, reserving only to himself the 
right to a quiet chuckle far down in the depths of his 
private consciousness. Thus all sorts of men and all 
sorts of deputations saw him, had their talks, bestowed 
on him all their tediousness, and gave him the benefit 
of their opinions ; not a creature was denied access, 



THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 75 

not a soul so lowly but might have their chance to 
bore the soul of this more lowly servant of the peo- 
ple. His own little, private, quiet, harmless laugh 
was his small comfort under all these inflictions. 
Sometimes the absolute confidence with which all 
contending sides urged their opinions and measures 
upon him, seemed to strike him with a solemn sense 
of the ludicrous. Thus when Dr. Cheever, at the 
head of a committee of clergymen, had been making 
a vigorous, authoritative appeal to him in Old Testa- 
ment language, to end all difficulties by emancipation, 
Lincoln seemed to meditate gravely, and at last an- 
swered slowly, "Well, gentlemen, it is not very often 
that one is favored with a delegation direct from the 
Almighty ! " 

Washington, at this time, was one great hospital of 
wounded soldiers ; the churches, the public buildings 
all filled with the maimed, the sick and suffering, and 
Lincoln's only diversion from the perplexity of state 
was the oversight of these miseries. "Where do you 
dine?" said one to him in our hearing. "Well, I 
don't dine, I just browse round a little, now and 
then." There was something irresistibly quaint and 
pathetic in the odd, rustic tone in which this was 
spoken. 

Even the Emancipation Proclamation — that one flag 
stone in the wide morass of despondency on which 
the wearied man at last set firm foothold, did not at 
first seem to be a first step into the land of promise. 

It was uttered too soon to please some parties, too 
late to please others. In England it was received in 
the face of much military ill success, with the scoffing 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

epigram that the President had proclaimed liberty in 
the states where he had no power, and retained slavery 
in those where he had. It is true there was to this 
the sensible and just reply that he only gained the 
right to emancipate by this war power, and that of 
course this did not exist in states that were not at war ; 
but when was ever a smart saying stopped in its 
course by the slow considerations and explanations of 
truth ? 

The battle of Gettysburg ^was the first argument 
that began to convince mankind that Mr. Lincoln was 
right. It has been well said, that in this world noth- 
ing succeeds but success. Bonaparte professed his 
belief that Providence always went with the strongest 
battalions, and therein he expressed about the average 
opinion of this world. Vicksburg and Gettysburg 
changed the whole face of the nation — they were 
the first stations outside of the valley of the shadow of 
death. 

The nation took new courage — even the weary 
clamorers for peace at any price, began to shout on the 
right side, and to hope that peace might come through 
northern victory, and so it did come, they did not care 
how. 

Whereas a few months before, Lincoln was univer- 
sally depreciated, doubted, scoffed and scorned, now 
he found himself re-elected to the Presidential chair, 
by an overwhelming majority. It was in fact almost 
an election by acclamation. When the votes were be- 
ing counted in New York late at night, and this vic- 
tory became apparent, the vast surging assembly at 
the motion of one individual, uncovered their heads 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL. 77 



\ 



and sang a solemn Doxology — an affecting incident 
which goes far to show what sort of feelings lay at the 
bottom of this vast movement, and how profoundly 
the people felt that this re-election of Lincoln was a 
vital step in their onward progress. 

At this hour the nation put the broad seal of its ap- 
probation on all his past course. At this moment she 
pledged herself to follow him and him alone to the 
end. 

Perhaps never was man re-elected who used fewer 
of popular arts — made fewer direct efforts. He was in- 
deed desirous to retain the place, for though he esti- 
mated himself quite humbly, still he was of opinion 
that on the whole his was as safe a hand as any, and 
he had watched the navigation so far as to come to 
love the hard helm, at which he had stood so pain- 
fully. In his usual quaint way he expressed his idea 
by a backwoods image. Alluding to the frequent ford- 
ings of turbulent streams that are the lot of the west- 
ern traveller, he said, " It is'nt best to swap horses 
in the middle of a creek." 

There was something almost preternatural in the 
calmness with which Lincoln accepted the news of his 
re-election. The first impulse seemed to be to dis- 
claim all triumph over the opposing party, and to so- 
berly gird up his loins to go on with his work to the 
end. 

His last inaugural has been called by one of the 
London newspapers "the noblest political document 
known to history." 

It was characterized by a solemn religious tone, so 
peculiarly free from earthly passion, that it seems to 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 

us now, who look back on it in the light of what has 
followed, as if his soul had already parted from earthly 
things, and felt the powers of the world to come. It 
was not the formal state-paper of the chief of a party 
in an hour of victory, so much as the solemn soliloquy 
of a great soul reviewing its course under a vast re- 
sponsibility, and appealing from all earthly judgments 
to the tribunal of Infinite Justice. It was a solemn 
clearing of his soul for the great sacrament of death: 

" Fellow Countrymen — At this second appearing to 
take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less 
occasion for an extended address than there was at 
the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a 
course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. 
Now, at the expiration of four years, during which 
public declarations have been constantly called forth 
on every point and phase of the great contest which 
still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies 
of the nation, little that is new could be presented. 

The progress of our arms, upon which all else chief- 
ly depends is as well known to the public as to my- 
self, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and en- 
couraging to all. With high hope for the future, no 
prediction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im- 
pending civil war. All dreaded it; all sought to 
avoid it. While the inaugural address was being de- 
livered from this place, devoted altogether to saving 
the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the 
city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking to dis- 
solve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. 



THE SECOND INAUGURAL. 79 

Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would 
make war rather than let the nation survive, and the 
other would accept war rather than let it perish, and 
the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves con- 
stituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew 
that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. 
To strengthen, perpetuate and extend this interest, 
was the object for which the insurgents would rend 
the Union even by war, while the Government claimed 
no right to do more than to restrict the territorial en- 
largement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude 
or the duration which it has already attained. Neither 
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease 
with, or even before the conflict itself should cease. 
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less 
fundamental and astounding. 

Both read the same Bible and prayed to the same 
God, and each invoke his aid against the other. It 
may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a 
just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the 
sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that 
we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
answered. That of neither has been answered fully. 
The Almighty has his own purposes. ' Woe unto the 
world because of offences, for it must needs be that 
offences come : but woe to that man by whom the of- 
fence cometh.' If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of these offences, which in the provi- 



80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

dence of God must needs come, but which having con- 
tinued through his appointed time, He now wills to re- 
move, and that he gives to both North and South this 
terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the 
offence came, shall we discern therein any departure 
from those divine attributes which the believers in a 
living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we 
hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge 
of war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that 
it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago ; so, still it must 
be said, ' The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.' 

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind 
up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle and for his widow and orphans, to do 
all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting 
peace among ourselves and with all nations." 

The words of Lincoln seemed to grow more clear 
and more remarkable as they approached the end. 
Perhaps in no language, ancient or modern, are any 
number of words found more touching and eloquent 
than his speech of November 19, 1863, at the Gettys- 
burg celebration. He wrote it in a few moments, 
while on the way to the celebration, on being told 
that he would be expected to make some remarks, and 
after Mr. Everett's oration he rose and read it. It was 
as follows: 



THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH. 81 

"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in lib- 
erty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are 
created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great civil 
war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so 
conceived and dedicated, can long endure. We are 
met on a great battle-field of that war. We have 
come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final 
resting-place for those who here gave their lives that 
the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and 
proper that we should do this. 

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot 
consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave 
men,living and dead, who struggled here, have consecra- 
ted it far above our poor power to add or detract. The 
world will little note, nor long remember what we say 
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for 
us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfin- 
ished work which they who fought here have thus far 
so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that 
from these honored dead, we take increased devotion 
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure 
of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and 
that government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth." 

The audience had admired Mr. Everett's long 
address. At Mr. Lincoln's few words, they cheered 
and sobbed and wept. When Mr. Lincoln had 
ended, he turned and congratulated Mr. Everett 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

on having succeeded so well. Mr. Everett replied, 
with a truthful and real compliment, "Ah, Mr. Lin- 
coln, how gladly I would exchange all my hundred 
pages, to have been the author of your twenty lines!" 

Probably no ruler ever made a more profoundly 
and peculiarly Christian impression on the mind of the 
world than Lincoln. In his religious faith two lead- 
ing ideas were prominent from first to last — man's 
helplessness, both as to strength and wisdom, and God's 
helpfulness in both. When he left Springfield to as- 
sume the Presidency, he said to his townsmen : 

"A duty devolves on me which is perhaps greater 
than that which has devolved on any other man since the 
days of Washington. He never would have succeed- 
ed but for the aid of divine Providence, on which he 
at all times relied, and I feel that I cannot succeed 
without the same Divine aid which sustained him. 
On the same Almighty Being I place my reliance for 
support, and I hope that you, my friends, will pray 
that I may receive that Divine assistance, without 
which I cannot succeed, but with which success is cer- 
tain." 

Abraham Lincoln's whole course showed that he 
possessed that faith without which, St. Paul says, it is 
impossible to please God, for "he that cometh to God 
must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of 
those who diligently seek him." 

And now our Christian pilgrim having passed 
through the valley of the shadow of death, and slain 
and vanquished giants and dragons, at last had a little 
taste, a few days sojourn, in the land of Beulah. 



THE ENTRY INTO RICHMOND. 83 

Cheer after cheer rose up and shook the land as by 
one great stroke after another the awful convulsions 
of the conflict terminated in full, perfect, final victory. 

Never did mortal man on this earth have a triumph 
more dramatic and astounding than Lincoln's victori- 
ous entry into Richmond. Years before, when a 
humble lawyer in Illinois, a man without prestige of 
person or manners or education, he had espoused 
what the world called the losing side, and been con- 
tent to take the up-hill, laborious road. He had seen 
his rival, adorned with every external advantage of 
person, manners, eloquence and oratory, sweeping all 
prizes away from him, and far distancing him in the 
race of political ambition. 

In those days, while confessing that he had felt the 
promptings of ambition, and the disappointment of 
ill success, there was one manly and noble sentiment 
that ought to be printed in letters of gold, as the 
motto of every rising young man. Speaking of the 
distinction at which Douglas was aiming, he said : 

" So REACHED AS THAT THE OPPRESSED OF MY SPE- 
CIES MIGHT HAVE EQUAL REASON TO REJOICE WITH ME, 
I SHOULD VALUE IT MORE THAN THE PROUDEST CROWN 
THAT COULD DECK THE BROW OF A MONARCH." 

At this moment of his life he could look back and 
see far behind him the grave of the once brilliant 
Douglas, who died worn out and worn down with dis- 
appointed ambition, while he, twice elected to the 
Presidency, was now standing the observed of all the 
world, in a triumph that has no like in history. 
And it was a triumph made memorable and peculiar 
by the ecstacies and hallelujahs of those very oppress- 



84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

ed with whose care years before he had weighted and 
burdened his progress. It was one of those earthly 
scenes which grandly foreshadow that great final tri- 
umph predicted in prophecy, when the Lord God 
shall wipe away all tears from all faces, and the rebuke 
of his people shall he utterly take away. A cotem- 
porary witness has described Lincoln, calm and simple, 
leading his little boy by the hand, while the liberated 
blacks hailed him with hymns and prayers, mingling 
his name at each moment with ascriptions of praise 
and glory to Jesus the Great Liberator, whose day at 
last had come. Who can say of what ages of mourn- 
ful praying and beseeching, what uplifting of poor, 
dumb hands that hour was the outcome ? Years be- 
fore, a clergyman of Virginia visiting the black insur- 
rectionist, Nat Turner, in his cell before execution, 
gives the following wonderful picture of him: "In 
rags, in chains, covered with blood and bruises, he 
yet is inspired by such a force of enthusiasm, as he 
lifts his chained hands to heaven, as really filled my soul 
with awe. It is impossible to make him feel that he is 
guilty. He evidently believes that he was called of 
God to do the work he did. When I pointed out to 
him that it could not be, because he was taken, con- 
demned, and about to be executed, he answered with 
enthusiasm, 'Was not Jesus Christ crucified? My 
cause will succeed yet ! ' " 

Years passed, and the prophetic visions of Nat Tur- 
ner were fulfilled on the soil of Virginia. It did in- 
deed rain blood ; the very leaves of the trees dripped 
blood ; but the work was done, the yoke was broken, 
and the oppressed went free. An old negress who 



THE ASSASSINATION. 85 

stood and saw the confederate prisoners being carried 
for safe keeping into the former slave pens, said grim- 
ly, "Well, de Lord am slow, but He am sure! 1 '' 

As the final scenes of his life drew on, it seemed as 
if a heavenly influence overshadowed the great mar- 
tyr, and wrought in him exactly the spirit that a man 
would wish to be found in when he is called to the 
eternal world. His last expressions and recorded po- 
litical actions looked towards peace and forgiveness. 
On the day before his death he joyfully ordered the 
discontinuance of the draft. His very last official act 
was to give orders that two of the chief leaders 
of the rebellion, then expected in disguise at a 
sea port, on their flight to Europe, should not be 
arrested, but permitted to embark ; so that he was 
thinking only of saving the lives of rebels, when 
they were thinking of taking his. If he had tried of 
set purpose to clear his soul for God's presence, and 
to put the rebels and their assassin champion in the 
wrong before that final tribunal, he could not have 
done better. 

Mr. Lincoln seems to have had during his course a 
marked presentiment of the fate which had from the 
first been threatening him, and which the increasing 
pile of letters marked "Assassination," gave him con- 
stant reason to remember. In more than one instance 
he had in his public speeches professed a solemn wil- 
lingness to die for his principles. The great tax 
which his labors and responsibilities made on his vi- 
tality, was perhaps one reason for his frequently say- 
ing that he felt that he should not live to go through 
with it. He observed to Mr. Lovejoy, during that 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

gentleman's last illness, in February, 1864, "This war 
is eating my life out ; I have a strong impression that 
I shall not live to see the end." In July following, 
he said to a correspondent of the Boston Journal, "I 
feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the rebel- 
lion. When it is over, my work will be done." 

Concerning the last painful history, there have been 
a thousand conflicting stories. From the mass of evi- 
dence the following brief account has been prepared, 
which sufficiently outlines the circumstances : 

Who were the persons concerned in the assassina- 
tion of President Lincoln, has never been judicially 
proved. Perhaps it never will be. The indictment 
against the conspirators named the following parties . 
David E. Herold, George A. Atzerodt, Lewis Payne, 
Michael O'Laughlin, Edward Spangler, Samuel Ar- 
nold, Mary E. Surratt, Samuel A. Mudd, John H. 
Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, Jefferson Davis, George 
N. Sanders, Beverly Tucker, Jacob Thompson, Will- 
iam C. Cleary, Clement C. Clay, George Harper, and 
George Young; and it added, "and others unknown." 
The assassin was John Wilkes Booth. And whether 
or no Jefferson Davis and his fellows in the rebel gov- 
ernment were actually aiding and abetting in this 
particular crime, it has not been unjust nor unnatural 
to suspect them of it. For Mr. Davis certainly accred- 
ited Thompson, Sanders, Clay, and Tucker, as his 
official agents in Canada. These men in their turn, 
and acting in harmony with their instructions and the 
purposes of their government, gave a commission to 
that John A. Kennedy who was detected in attempt- 
ing to kindle an extensive fire in the city of New 



THE ASSASSINATION. 87 

York, and consulted with him about his proposed 
plans. This was the substance of Kennedy's own con- 
fession, and he and his accomplices did kindle fires in 
four of the New York hotels. It is completely proved, 
again, that Davis paid sundry sums, in all $35,000 
in gold, to incendiaries hired by his government to 
burn hospitals and steamboats at the West, and that 
Thompson paid money to a person engaged in Dr. 
Blackburn's attempt to spread yellow fever in our 
cities. 

But more : when one Alston wrote to Davis, offer- 
ing his services to try to "rid my country of some of 
her deadliest enemies, by striking at the very heart's 
blood of those who seek to enchain her in slavery " — 
adding the very significant remark, " I consider noth- 
ing dishonorable having such a tendency," Mr. Davis 
caused this proposition not to be refused, nor passed 
over in silence, nor indignantly exposed; but to be 
"respectfully referred, by direction of the President, 
to the honorable Secretary of War." Still more: it 
has been proved that in 1863, John Wilkes Booth 
declared that " Abraham Lincoln must be killed." 
The rebel agents in Canada, six months before the 
assassination, specifically made the same declaration. 
In the summer of 1864, Thompson said that he could 
at any time have the " tyrant Lincoln," or any of his 
advisers that he chose, " put out of the way," and 
that Thompson's agents would not consider doing this 
a crime, if done for the rebel cause; and Clay, when 
he heard of this, corroborated the sentiment, saying, 
" That is so ; we are all devoted to our cause, and 
ready to go any length — to do anything under the 
sun." Many other such utterances by rebel leaders 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

are proved and have become uncontradicted matter of 
history. Besides ; when Mr. Davis, at Charlotte, North 
Carolina, while fleeing from Richmond, received the 
telegram announcing the fate of Mr. Lincoln, he calm- 
ly read it aloud to the people present, and without a 
word of disapproval, uttered a cold comment : " If it 
were to be done, it were better it were well done." 
And when Breckinridge said he regretted it, (not be- 
cause it was wicked or dishonorable, but because it 
was unfortunate for the South just then,) Mr Davis 
replied in the same tone of cold indifference or of 
concealed satisfaction, and using the same words: 
" Well, General, I don't know ; if it were to be done 
at all, it were better that it were well done ; and if the 
same had been done to Andy Johnson, the Beast (i. e. 
Gen. Butler), and to Secretary Stanton, the job would 
then be complete." Those are not the words of an 
honorable man, nor of a disapprover. But they are 
exactly natural to an accessory before the fact, who 
does not confess his part in it, and prefers to dissemble 
his joy. It is not at all unreasonable to suspect that 
the men who are proved to have done thus and spoken 
thus, before and after the deed, and who have openly 
hired and approved the perpetration of such other 
deeds, were concerned in the planning and execution 
of this deed too. 

Booth was an actor, and the son of a well known 
actor ; and the son had inherited, apparently, much 
of the reckless and occasionally furious temper of his 
father. He was also a very violent and bitter rebel. 
During the fall of 1864, he had been in Canada, con- 
sulting with the rebel agents there, and mixed up 



THE ASSASSINATION. 89 

with a number of other subordinate agents in the busi- 
ness of assassinating President Lincoln ; and he was 
the most prominent candidate, so to speak, for the 
place of actual murderer. On November 11th, 1864, 
he was in New York, where, while riding with a com- 
panion in a street car, he dropped a letter which came 
into the possession of the government ; it was a vig- 
orous appeal to him to assassinate Mr. Lincoln. It 
said: "Abe must die, and now. You can choose your 
weapons, the cup, the knife, the bullet ;" and again : 
" Strike for your home, strike for your country ; bide 
your time, but strike sure." During the winter, 
Booth was engaging the assistance required for his 
scheme ; and he had already fixed upon the scene of 
the murder ; for, not later than January, he was urging 
one Chester to enter into the plan, and assuring him 
that all his part of it would be to stand at the back 
door of Ford's Theatre and open it. This was a safe 
calculation, for the President's enjoyment of dramatic 
performances was great, and enhanced by the diffi- 
culty of finding agreeable relaxations, and also by the 
awful pressure of his official duties and of the war, 
which intensified the need of relaxation. 

The scheme as finally arranged, provided for the as- 
sassination of Mr. Lincoln, by Booth; of Mr. Johnson, 
by Atzerodt ; of Mr. Seward, by Payne, (alias Powell) ; 
and of Gen. Grant, by O'Laughlin. For the Presi- 
dent, an elaborate death trap was constructed in Ford's 
Theatre. The catches of the locks to all three doors 
of the President's box (one outer and two inner ones), 
were loosened by loosening their screws, and left so 
that a slight push would enable the assassin to enter 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

even though the doors should be locked. A small 
hole was made through one of the two inner ones, to 
enable him to see before entering exactly how his vic- 
tim sat, so that the final moves within the box could 
be laid out before entering it ; and a wooden brace 
was prepared to set against the outer door (which 
opened inward) with one end, and with the other to 
fit a mortice cut in the wall behind, so that after en- 
tering, the assassin could fasten the door behind him 
sufficiently to prevent any interruption until his work 
was done. Arrangements were made for securing 
horses for the murderers to flee with. The stage car- 
penter or assistant, Spangler, was employed to be on 
hand and open and shut the back door of the theatre 
when wanted. Some scenes and miscellaneous matter 
that frequently impeded more or less the passage from 
the front of the stage to this back door, were piled up 
or otherwise put out of the way. A supply of weap- 
ons for the conspirators was provided. And a route 
for flight from Washington within the rebel lines was 
determined on. This route led southward from the 
city, over Anacostia Bridge, ten miles to Mrs. Surratt's 
house at Surrattsville, then some fifteen miles more to 
Dr. Mudd's house, then about twenty miles to a point 
where arrangements were made for crossing the Poto- 
mac and proceeding towards Richmond. 

All being ready, Booth, about 9 P. M., on the 14th 
of April, 1865, went to the theatre. He first went to 
the back door, entered it and saw that all was pre- 
pared ; left Spangler in charge, and left his horse to 
be held by another subordinate of the theatre. Then 
he went round to the front of the building, where 



THE ASSASSINATION. 91 

three of the conspirators were waiting. It was now 
about half past nine. One act of the play, " Our 
American Cousin," — was nearly through. " I think he 
will come out now," remarked Booth. It is very 
usual for the spectators to leave the theatre between 
the acts, often to return ; and if Mr. Lincoln had hap- 
pened to feel too busy to remain longer and had left 
then, probably Booth would have attacked him there, 
trusting to be able to escape into the theatre in the 
bustle and so through his guarded door. But the 
President did not come. Booth went into a saloon 
close by and drank some whisky. The spectators had 
returned for the next act. Booth entered the vesti- 
bule of the theatre, and from it the passage that leads 
from the street to the stage and also to the outer door 
of the President's box. As he did so, one of his com- 
panions followed him into the vestibule, looked up to 
the clock and called out the hour. It was approach- 
ing ten. Three successive times, at intervals of sev- 
eral minutes, the companion thus called out the hour. 
The third time he called, in a louder tone, " Ten min- 
utes past ten o'clock !" At this Booth disappeared in 
the theatre, and the three others walked rapidly away. 
Booth went straight to the outer door of the Presi- 
dent's box, paused and showed a visiting card to the 
President's messenger, who was in waiting ; placed his 
hand and his knee against the door, and pushing it 
open, entered. He then quietly fastened the door 
with the brace that stood ready ; looked through the 
hole in the inner door, and saw the President. Si- 
lently opening the door, he entered. Mr. Lincoln sat at 
the left hand front corner of the box, his wife at his 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN". 

right hand, a Miss Harris at the right hand front cor- 
ner, and a Major Rathbone behind her. Mr. Lincoln 
was leaning forward and looking down into the orches- 
tra. Booth stepped quickly up, and fired a pistol 
bullet into the President's head, behind and on the 
left side. The murdered man raised his head once; it 
fell back upon his chair, and his eyes closed. Major 
Rathbone, a cool, bold and prompt soldier, who had 
been absorbed in the play, now hearing the pistol-shot, 
turned, saw Booth through the smoke, and instantly 
sprang upon him. Booth, a nervous and strong man, 
expert in all athletic exercises, and a skillful fencer, 
wrenched himself free with a desperate effort, as he 
well needed to do. He had already dropped his pis- 
tol and drawn a heavy bowie knife, with which he made 
a furious thrust at his captor's heart. Rathbone parried 
it, but was wounded deeply in the arm and his hold 
loosed. Booth sprang for the front of the box ; Rath- 
bone followed, but only caught his clothes as he sprang 
over. Rathbone shouted " Stop that man! " and then 
turned to assist the President. 

Booth leaped over the front of the box, down upon 
the stage, shouting as he went, " Revenge for the 
South!" His spur caught in the national flag as he 
descended ; the entanglement caused him to fall almost 
flat on the stage as he came down ; and either the 
wrench of tearing loose from the flag, or the fall, 
snapped one of the bones of his leg between knee and 
ankle. This fracture, though not preventing him at 
once from moving about, so far disabled him as prob- 
ably to have been the occasion of his being overtaken 
and captured ; so that it is scarcely extravagant to im- 



THE ASSASSINATION. 93 

agine the flag as having, in a sense, avenged the guilt 
of the crime perpetrated upon its chief official de- 
fender, by waylaying and entrapping the criminal in 
his turn, as he had done his victim. Booth instantly 
sprang up, turned towards the audience, and raising 
his bloody knife in a stage attitude, with a theatrical 
manner, vociferated the motto of the State of Virgin- 
ia, " Sic semper tyrannis!" — a motto already turned 
into a discreditable satire by its contrast with the char- 
acteristic traffic of the great slavebreeding state, and 
even more effectually disgraced by the use now made 
of it, to justify assassination. It will be strange if 
some less dishonored words are not one day chosen 
for the device of Free Virginia. 

Booth, thus vaporing for a moment, then rushed 
headlong across the stage, and darted by the side pas- 
sage to the rear door. One man sprang from an 
orchestra seat upon the stage and shouted to stop him. 
One of the employes of the theatre, standing in the 
passage, was too much startled to stand aside, and the 
desperate fugitive struck him on the leg, cut at him 
twice, knocked him one side and darted on. The door 
was ready. He sprang out, and it shut behind him. 
Seizing the horse which was held in waiting for him, 
Booth, as if in a frenzy like that of the Malays when 
"running amok" struck the poor fellow who held it, 
with the butt of his knife, knocking him down ; and 
then kicking him, sprang to the saddle, and after a 
few moments lost in consequence of some nervousness 
or fright of the animal, rode swiftly off. This was on 
the evening of Friday, the 14th ; it was on Wednes- 
day, the 26th, that Booth, after having been delayed 
7 



94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

by having his leg set, and crippled by it afterwards, 
was discovered in Garrett's barn, south of the Rappa- 
hannock, not far from twenty miles from the Potomac, 
and was surrounded, shot and taken. 

The murdered President was quickly carried from 
the theatre to a house across the street and placed 
upon a bed. Surgical aid was at once obtained, but 
an examination at once showed that there was no hope 
of life. Mr. Lincoln's eyes had not opened, nor had 
consciousness returned at all, and they never did. The 
ball was a heavy one, from what is called a Derringer 
pistol, a short single -barreled weapon with a large 
bore. It had passed clear through the brain, and 
lodged against the bone of the orbit of the left eye, 
breaking that bone. It is almost certain that Mr. 
Lincoln suffered no pain after being shot, as the in- 
jury was of a nature to destroy conscious life. His 
exceedingly strong constitution and tenacity of life 
maintained respiration and circulation for a remarka- 
bly long time, but he died the next morning at about 
half past seven. 

Of the particulars of that great national mourning 
which bowed the whole land, it is not needful to speak. 
Like many parts of that great history of which it 
formed a portion, there were often points in it of a 
peculiar and symbolic power, which rose to the sub- 
lime. Such was the motto — "Be still, and know that 
I am God" — which spoke from the walls of the New 
York depot when amid the hush of weeping thousands, 
the solemn death car entered. The contrast between 
the peaceful expression on the face of the weary man, 
and the surging waves of mourning and lamentation 
around him was touching and awful. 



THE ASSASSINATION. 95 

Not the least touching among these expressions of 
national mourning was the dismay and anguish of that 
poor oppressed race for whose rights he died. 

A southern correspondent of the New York Trib- 
une, the week following the assassination, wrote : 
" I never saw such sad faces, or heard such heavy 
heart-beatings, as here in Charleston the day the news 
came. The colored people were like children be- 
reaved of a parent. I saw one old woman going up 
the streets, wringing her hands, and saying aloud as 
she walked, looking straight before her, so absorbed 
in her grief that she noticed no one ; 

'OLord! Oh Lord! OLord! Massa Sam's dead! 
Massa Sam's dead!' 

' Who's dead, Aunty ? ' 'Massa Sam's dead!' she 
said, not looking at me, and renewing her lamenta- 
tions. 

' Who's Massa Sam ?' said I. 

'Uncle Sam,' she said, 'OLord! OLord!' 

Not quite sure that she meant the President, I spoke 
again : 

' Who's Massa Sam, Aunty ?' 

'Mr. Lincum!' she said, and resumed wringing her 
hands, mourning in utter hopelessness of sorrow." 

The poor negroes on the distant plantations had 
formed a conception of Lincoln, much akin to that of a 
Divine Being. Their masters fled on the approach of 
our soldiers, and this gave the slaves the conception 
of a great Invisible Power which they called Massa 
Lincum. An old negro exhorter once, rising in an 
assembly of them, was heard solemnly instructing his 
fellows in the nature of this great unknown: " Bred- 



96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN*. 

ren," he said solemnly, " Massa Lincum, he be ebery- 
where. He knows ebery ting ;" and looking up sol- 
emnly, " He walk de earf like de Lord." 

To them the stroke was almost as if we could pos- 
sibly conceive death as happening to the God we wor- 
ship ; a mingled shock of grief, surprise and terror. 

No death of a public man ever entered so deep into 
the life of individual families, so as to seem like a per- 
sonal domestic sorrow. The assumption of mourning 
badges and garments, the hanging out of mourning 
tokens, was immediate in thousands of families, each 
obeying the same spontaneous impulse without stop- 
ping to consult the other. It seemed almost as if the 
funeral bells tolled of themselves and without hands.- 
Wherever the news travelled, so immediately and 
without waiting for public consultation, were these 
tributes of mourning given. 

One fact alone, proves the depth and strength of 
these feelings more than volumes of description. It 
is, the vast extent of the publications in which the 
history of Mr. Lincoln's life and times, his individual 
biography and real or written utterances, or his per- 
sonal appearance, were in one way or another com- 
memorated. A gentleman who has begun a collec- 
tion of such materials had some time ago gathered two 
hundred different books on Mr. Lincoln, a hundred 
and twenty-five portraits, besides badges, mourning 
cards, autographs and manuscripts, as he reports, 
"almost without number." And in the list of publi- 
cations about the rebellion compiled by Mr. Bartlett, 
are enumerated three hundred and eighty books, ser- 
mons, eulogies or addresses upon his 'life or death. 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 97 

There is an astonishing contrast between the per- 
fect sweetness and kindness of Mr. Lincoln's senti- 
ments and utterances, whether private or public, indi- 
vidual or official, in reference to the rebels and the re- 
bellion, and theirs about him. Doubtless no loyal cit- 
izen of the United States was so uniformly kind in 
feeling and decorous and even courteous in expres- 
sion, about the rebels ; and doubtless no such citizen 
was so odiously bespattered with the most hateful and 
vulgar and ferocious insult and abuse, both public and 
private. To give the quotations to prove the point 
would be simply disgusting. They were sprinkled 
through the newspapers and the public documents of 
the rebellion from beginning to end of it. A com- 
pend and a proof at once of the whole of them was 
that private bundle of letters threatening death, 
marked in Mr. Lincoln's own handwriting "Assassina- 
tion," and kept in his private cabinet. And the assas- 
sination itself and the circumstances connected with 
it, constituted another proof and specimen, still more 
overwhelming. Never since the times of the Chris- 
tian martyrs has history recorded a contrast more hu- 
miliating to humanity, between his kind words and kind 
intentions on the one hand, and infamous abusive- 
ness and deliberate bloodthirsty ferocity in those who 
thus slew the best and kindest friend they had in the 
world. 

Scarcely less striking was the contrast between the 
habitual tone of the foreign utterances about Presi- 
dent Lincoln before his death and that of those after 
it ; a change, moreover, whose promptness and evi- 
dent manly good faith may in some measure atone for 



98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

the unreasonable and even indecent character of many 
things said and printed in Europe. It is unnecessary 
to reproduce the offences : it is a more grateful task to 
quote a few specimens of the feelings and expressions 
with which the news of his death and of the manner 
of it was received abroad. 

It may be premised, that some few persons of for- 
eign birth and good position, had already discerned 
the truth of the character of Mr. Lincoln. A corres- 
pondent of the N. Y. Times wrote that paper from 
Washington, on one occasion, the following narrative : 

" One day, as President Lincoln drove past a Wash- 
ington hotel, sitting alone in his carriage, three gen- 
tlemen stood talking in front of the hotel. One of 
them, a foreigner of high cultivation and great dis- 
tinction, with a gesture quite involuntary, raised his 
hat and remained uncovered until Mr. Lincoln had 
passed by. One of his companions, surprised at so 
much ceremony, observed, " You forget that you are 
in republican America and not in Russia." "Not at 
all, sir — not at all," was the reply, given with a 
certain indignation ; " that is the only living ruler 
whom I sincerely reverence. I could not avoid show- 
ing the feeling, if I would. He is a patriot, a states- 
man, a great-hearted honest man. You Americans 
reverence nothing in the present." And after a few 
more sentences to the like effect, he ended by saying : 
" Not only your posterity, but the posterity of all the 
peoples which love honesty and revere patriotism, will 
declare that the part which President Lincoln was 
called to perform, required the exercise of as noble 
qualities as the ' Father of his Country ' ever pos- 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 99 

sessed. It is any thing but a credit to you that you 
do not better appreciate the man whom God has sent 
in these perilous times to rule the people of this re- 
public." 

The rebuke was received in silence. But such 
cases were very few. The general tone of foreign 
opinion about him was thoroughly unjust. Not so the 
obituary testimonials from across the sea. 

On the first of May, 1865, Sir George Grey, in the 
English House of Commons, moved an address to the 
Crown, to express the feelings of the House upon the 
assassination of Mr. Lincoln. In this address he said 
that he was convinced that Mr. Lincoln "in the hour 
of victory, and in the triumph of victory, would have 
shown that wise forbearance, and that generous con- 
sideration, which would have added tenfold lustre to 
the fame that he had already acquired, amidst the va- 
rying fortunes of the war." 

In seconding the same address, at the same time and 
place, Mr. Benjamin Disraeli said: "But in the charac- 
ter of the victim, and in the very accessories of his almost 
latest moments, there is something so homely and so 
innocent that it takes the subject, as it were, out of 
the pomp of history, and out of the ceremonial of di- 
plomacy. It touches the heart of nations, and appeals 
to the domestic sentiments of mankind." 

In the House of Lords, Lord John Russell, in mov- 
ing a similar address, observed: "President Lincoln 
was a man who, although he had not been distin- 
guished before his election, had from that time dis- 
played a character of so much integrity, sincerity and 
straightforwardness, and at the same time of so much 



100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

kindness, that if any one could have been able to alle- 
viate the pain and animosity which have prevailed 
during the civil war, I believe President Lincoln was 
the man to have done so." And again, in speaking 
of the question of amending the constitution so as to 
prohibit slavery, he said : " We must all feel that there 
again the death of President Lincoln deprives the 
United States of the man who was the leader on this 
subject." 

Mr. John Stuart Mill, the distinguished philosopher, 
in a letter to an American friend, used far stronger 
expressions than these guarded phrases of high 
officials. He termed Mr. Lincoln "the great citizen 
who had afforded so noble an example of the qualities 
befitting the first magistrate of a free people, and who, 
in the most trying circumstances, had gradually won 
not only the admiration, but almost the personal affec- 
tion of all who love freedom or appreciate simplicity 
or uprightness." 

Professor Gold win Smith, writing to the London 
Daily News, began by saying, "It is difficult to meas- 
ure the calamity which the United States and the 
world have sustained by the murder of President Lin- 
coln. The assassin has done his best to strike down 
mercy and moderation, of both of which this good 
and noble life was the main stay." 

Senhor Rebello da Silva, a member of the Portu- 
guese Chamber of Peers, in moving a resolution on the 
death of Mr. Lincoln, thus outlined his character: 
"He is truly great who rises to the loftiest heights 
from profound obscurity, relying solely on his own 
merits as did Napoleon, Washington, Lincoln. For 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 101 

these arose to power and greatness, not through any 
favor or grace, by a chance cradle, or genealogy, but 
through the prestige of their own deeds, through the 
nobility which begins and ends with themselves — the 
sole offspring of their own works. * * * Lincoln 
was of this privileged class; he belonged to this aris- 
tocracy. In infancy, his energetic soul was nourished 
by poverty. In youth, he learned through toil the 
love of liberty, and respect for the rights of man. 
Even to the age of twenty-two, educated in adversity, 
his hands made callous by honorable labor, he rested 
from the fatigues of the field, spelling out, in the pa- 
ges of the Bible, in the lessons of the gospel, in the 
fugitive leaves of the daily journal — which the aurora 
opens, and the night disperses — the first rudiments of 
instruction, which his solitary meditations ripened. 
The chrysalis felt one day the ray of the sun, which 
called it to life, broke its involucrum, and it launched 
forth fearlessly from the darkness of its humble clois- 
ter into the luminous spaces of its destiny. The farm- 
er, day-laborer, shepherd, like Cincinnatus, left the 
plough-share in the half-broken furrow, and, legislator 
of his own State, and afterwards of the Great Repub- 
lic, saw himself proclaimed in the tribunal the popular 
chief of several millions of people, the maintainer of 
the holy principle inaugurated by Wilberforce." 

There are some vague and some only partially cor- 
rect statements in this diffuse passage ; but it shows 
plainly enough how enthusiastically the Portugese no- 
bleman had admired the antique simplicity and 
strength of Mr. Lincoln's character. 

Dr. Merle d' Aubigne, the historian of the Reforma- 
tion, writing to Mr. Fogg, U. S. Minister to Switzer- 



102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

land, said: "While not venturing to compare him to 
the great sacrifice of Golgotha, which gave liberty to 
the captives, is it not just, in this hour, to recall the 
word of an apostle (1 John, iii: 16): 'Hereby per- 
ceive we the love of God, because he laid down his 
life for us : and we ought to lay down our lives for 
the brethren ' ? Who can say that the President did 
not lay down his life by the firmness of his devotion 
to a great duty ? The name of Lincoln will remain 
one of the greatest that history has to inscribe on its 
annals. * * * Among the legacies which Lincoln 
leaves to us, we shall all regard as the most precious, 
his spirit of equity, of moderation, and of peace, ac- 
cording to which he will still preside, if I may so 
speak, over the restoration of your great nation." 

The "Democratic Association" of Florence, ad- 
dressed "to the Free People of the United States," a 
letter, in which they term Mr. Lincoln "the honest, 
the magnanimous citizen, the most worthy chief mag- 
istrate of your glorious Federation." 

The eminent French liberal, M. Edouard Laboulaye, 
in a speech showing a remarkably just understanding 
and extremely broad views with respect to the affairs 
and the men of the United States, said: "Mr. Lincoln 
was one of those heroes who are ignorant of them- 
selves ; his thoughts will reign after him. The name 
of Washington has already been pronounced, and I 
think with reason. Doubtless Mr. Lincoln resembled 
Franklin more than Washington. By his origin, his 
arch good nature, his ironical good sense, and his love 
of anecdotes and jesting, he was of the same blood as 
the printer of Philadelphia. But it is nevertheless 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 103 

true that in less than a century, America has passed 
through two crises in which its liberty might have 
been lost, if it had not had honest men at its head ; 
and that each time it has had the happiness to meet 
the man best fitted to serve it. If Washington found- 
ed the Union, Lincoln has saved it. History will draw 
together and unite those two names. A single word 
explains Mr. Lincoln's whole life : it was Duty. Never 
did he put himself forward ; never did he think of 
himself; never did he seek one of those ingenious 
combinations which puts the head of a state in bold 
relief, and enhances his importance at the expense 
of the country ; his only ambition, his only thought 
was faithfully to fulfil the mission which his fellow- 
citizens had entrusted to him. * * * His inaugu- 
ral address, March 4, 1865, shows us what progress 
had been made in his soul. This piece of familiar 
eloquence is a master-piece ; it is the testament of a 
patriot. I do not believe that any eulogy of the 
President would equal this page on which he has de- 
picted himself in all his greatness and all his simplic- 
ity. * * * History is too often only a school of 
immorality. It shows us the victory of force or strat- 
agem much more than the success of justice, modera- 
tion, and probity. It is too often only the apotheosis 
of triumphant selfishness. There are noble and great 
exceptions ; happy those who can increase the number, 
and thus bequeath a noble and beneficent example to 
posterity ! Mr. Lincoln is among these. He would 
willingly have repeated, after Franklin, that 'false- 
hood and artifice are the practice of fools who have 
not wit enough to be honest. ' All his private life, 



104 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

and all his political life, were inspired and directed by 
this profound faith in the omnipotence of virtue. It 
is through this, again, that he deserves to be compared 
with Washington ; it is through this that he will re- 
main in history with the most glorious name that can 
be merited by the head of a free people — a name 
given him by his cotemporaries, and which will be 
preserved to him by posterity — that of Honest Abra- 
ham Lincoln." 

A letter from the well known French historian, 
Henri Martin, to the Paris Siecle, contained the fol- 
lowing passages: "Lincoln will remain the austere 
and sacred personification of a great epoch, the most 
faithful expression of democracy. This simple and 
upright man, prudent and strong, elevated step by 
step from the artizan's bench to the command of a 
great nation, and always without parade and without 
effort, at the height of his position ; executing without 
precipitation, without flourish, and with invincible 
good sense, the most colossal acts ; giving to the world 
this decisive example of the civil power in a republic ; 
directing a gigantic war, without free institutions be- 
ing for an instant compromised or threatened by mili- 
tary usurpation ; dying, finally, at the moment when, 
after conquering, he was intent on pacification, * " 

* this man will stand out, in the traditions of his 
country and the world, as an incarnation of the peo- 
ple, and of modern democracy itself. The great work 
of emancipation had to be sealed, therefore, with the 
blood of the just, even as it was inaugurated with the 
blood of the just. The tragic history of the abolition 
of slavery, which opened with the gibbet of John 
Brown, will close with the assassination of Lincoln. 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 105 

And now let him rest by the side of Washington, 
as the second founder of the great Republic. Euro- 
pean democracy is present in spirit at his funeral, as 
it voted in its heart for his re-election, and applauded 
the victory in the midst of which he passed away. It 
will wish with one accord to associate itself with the 
monument that America will raise to him upon the 
capitol of prostrate slavery." 

The London Globe, in commenting on Mr. Lincoln's 
assassination, said that he "had come nobly through a 
great ordeal. He had extorted the admiration even of 
his opponents, at least on this side of the water. They 
had come to admire, reluctantly, his firmness, honesty, 
fairness and sagacity. He tried to do, and had done, 
what he considered his duty, with magnanimity." 

The London Express said, " He had tried to show 
the world how great, how moderate, and how true he 
could be, in the moment of his great triumph." 

The Liverpool Post said, "If ever there was a man 
who in trying times avoided offenses, it was Mr. Lin- 
coln. If there ever was a leader in a civil contest who 
shunned acrimony and eschewed passion, it was he. 
In a time of much cant and affectation he was simple, 
unaffected, true, transparent. In a season of many 
mistakes he was never known to be wrong. * * * 
By a happy tact, not often so felicitously blended with 
pure evidence of soul, Abraham Lincoln knew when 
to speak, and never spoke too early or too late. * * * 
The memory of his statesmanship, translucent in the 
highest degree, and above the average, and openly 
faithful, more than almost any of this age has wit- 
nessed, to fact and right, will live in the hearts and 



106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

minds of the whole Anglo-Saxon race, as one of the 
noblest examples of that race's highest qualities. Add 
to all this that Abraham Lincoln was the humblest 
and pleasantest of men, that he had raised himself 
from nothing, and that to the last no grain of conceit 
or ostentation was found in him, and there stands be- 
fore the world a man whose like we shall not soon 
look upon again." 

In the remarks of M. Rouher, the French Minister, 
in the Legislative Assembly, on submitting to that As- 
sembly the official despatch of the French Foreign 
Minister to the Charge at Washington, M. Rouher re- 
marked, of Mr. Lincoln's personal character, that he 
had exhibited " that calm firmness and indomitable 
energy which belong to strong minds, and are the 
necessary conditions of the accomplishment of great 
duties. In the hour of victory he exhibited generos- 
ity, moderation and conciliation." 

And in the despatch, which was signed by M. Drouyn 
de L' Huys, were the following expressions: "Abra- 
ham Lincoln exhibited, in the exercise of the power 
placed in his hands, the most substantial qualities. In 
him, firmness of character was allied to elevation of 
principle. * * * In reviewing these last testimo- 
nies to his exalted wisdom, as well as the examples of 
good sense, of courage, and of patriotism, which he 
has given, history will not hesitate to place him in the 
rank of citizens who have the most honored their 
country." 

In the Prussian Lower House, Herr Loewes, in 
speaking of the news of the assassination, said that 
Mr. Lincoln "performed his duties without pomp or 



FOREIGN OPINIONS. 107 

ceremony, and relied on that dignity of his inner self 
alone, which is far above rank, orders and titles. He 
was a faithful servant, not less of his own common- 
wealth than of civilization, freedom and humanity." 

By far the most beautiful of all these foreign trib- 
utes, was the very generous memorial of the London 
Punch. That paper had joined all the fashionable 
world in making merry at Lincoln's expense while he 
struggled, weary and miry, through the "valley of 
humiliation," — but it is not every one who does a 
wrong who is capable of so full and generous a repa- 
ration. We give it entire, because, apart from its no- 
ble spirit, it is one of the most truthful summaries of 
Lincoln's character: 

You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier ! 

You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 

His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 

His gaunt, gnarled hands, his nnkempt, bristling hair, 
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 

His lack of all we prize as debonair, 

Of power or will to shine, of art to please ! 

You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
Judging each step, as though the way were plain : 

Reckless, so it could point its paragraph, 
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain ! 

Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
The stars and stripes he lived to rear anew, 

Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
Say, scurril-jester, is there room for you ? 

Yes, he had lived to shame me from my sneer — 
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen — 



108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. 

My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
Noting how to occasion's height he rose ; 

How his quaint wit made home truth seem more true; 
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows ; 

How humble, yet how hopeful he could be ; 

How in good fortune and in ill the same ; 
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 

Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 

He went about his work — such work as few 
Ever had laid on head, and heart, and hand — 

As one who knows where there's a task to do ; 

Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command , 

Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
That God makes instruments to work his will, 

If but that will we can arrive to know, 

Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 

So he went forth to battle, on the side 

That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 

As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 

His warfare with rude nature's thwarting mights ; — 

The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 

The iron bark that turn's the lumberer's axe, 

The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 

The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, 

The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear — 

Such were the needs that helped his youth to train i 

Rough culture — but such trees large fruit may bear, 
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 

So he grew up, a destined work to do, 

And lived to do it : four long suffering years' 

Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, 

And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 



FINAL ESTIMATE. , 109 



The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 

And took both with the same unwavering mood ; 
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 

And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 

A felon hand, between the goal and him, 
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest — 
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 

Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest ! 

The words of mercy were upon his lips, 

Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 

To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men. 

The old world and the new, from sea to sea, 
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame ! 

Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high ! 
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came. 

Lincoln must be looked upon in the final review of 
his character, as one of those men elect of God, whom 
he calls and chooses to effect great purposes of his 
own, and fashions and educates with especial reference 
to that purpose. As is usual in such cases, the man 
whom God chooses for a work is not at all the man 
whom the world beforehand would choose, and often 
for a time the world has difficulty in receiving him. 
There was great questioning about him in the diplo- 
matic circles of Europe, when the war began, and 
there was great searching of heart concerning him at 
home. There have been times when there were im- 
patient murmurs that another sort of man was wanted 
in his chair — a man with more dash, more brilliancy, 
more Napoleonic efficiency. Yet in the contest such 



110 • ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

a man might have been our ruin. A brilliant military 
genius might have wrecked the republic on the rock 
of military despotism, where so many good ships have 
gone down ; whereas, slow, cautious, honest old Abe 
only took our rights of habeas corpus, and other civil 
privileges, as he did the specie of old, to make the 
legal tender, and brought it all back safe and sound. 

Lincoln was a strong man, but his strength was of 
a peculiar kind ; it was not aggressive so much as 
passive, and among passive things it was like the 
strength not so much of a stone buttress as of a wire 
cable. It was strength swaying to every influence, 
yielding on this side and on that to popular needs, 
yet tenaciously and inflexibly bound to carry its great 
end. Probably by no other kind of strength could 
our national ship have been drawn safely through so 
dreadful a channel. Surrounded by all sorts of con- 
flicting claims, by traitors, by half-hearted, timid men, 
by border State men and free State men, by radical 
abolitionists and conservatives, he listened to all, heard 
all, weighed all, and in his own time acted by his 
own honest convictions in the fear of God, and thus 
simply and purely he did the greatest work that has 
been done in modern times. 




^^^7^Z^£^ 



CHAPTER II. 

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

A General Wanted — A Short War Expected — The Young Napoleon — God's 
Revenge Against Slavery — The Silent Man in Galena — " Tanning Leather " 
— Gen. Grant's Puritan Descent — How he Loaded the Logs — His West Point 
Career — Service in Mexico — Marries and Leaves the Army — Wood-Cutting, 
Dunning and Leather- Selling — Enlists against the Rebellion — Missouri Cam- 
paign — Paducah Campaign — Fort Donelson Campaign — Battle of Shiloh — 
How Grant Lost his Temper — Vicksburg Campaign — Lincoln on Grant's 
" Drinking " — Chattanooga — Grant's Method of Making a Speech — Ap- 
pointed Lieutenant-General — The Richmond Campaign — "Mr. Grant is a 
Very Obstinate* Man " — Grant's Qualifications as a Ruler — Honesty — Gene- 
rosity to Subordinates— Sound Judgment of Men — Power of Holding his 
Tongue— Grant's Sidewalk Platform— Talks Horse to Senator Wade — "Wants 
Nothing Said " — The Best Man for Next President. 

When the perception of our late great military cri- 
sis first came upon us, and we found ourselves engaged 
in an actual and real war, our first inquiry was for our 
General. 

For years and years there had been only peace talk 
and peace valuations in our market. There had, to 
be sure, been some frontier skirmishing — a campaign 
in Mexico, which drew off our more restless adventur- 
ers, and gave our politicians a little of a smart, martial 
air, in rounding their periods, and pointing their allu- 
sions. We had played war in Mexico as we read ro- 
mances, and the principal interest of it was, after all, 
confined to our very small regular army of some 
twenty-five thousand men, where some got promotions 
in consequence of the vacancies made in this or that 
battle. 

Ill 



112 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

Gen. Scott won European renown and some laurels 
in this country. We created an office of Lieutenant 
General on purpose to do him honor ; but the people, 
after all, laughed in their sleeves, and irreverently 
called our national hero "Old Fuss and Feathers;" a 
nickname which went far to show that whatever his 
talents in the field might be, he had not succeeded in 
establishing over the body of his countrymen the 
ascendency which strong minds hold over weak ones. 

But when the hour of our trial came we had to look 
to him as our leader, and Gen. Scott accepted cheer- 
fully the situation, whose reality and magnitude neither 
he nor we, nor any mortal living at that time, per- 
ceived, or could estimate. Seward smiled in his cabi- 
net chair, and spoke of the affair as a little skirmish 
that would be over in ninety days. A battle or two, 
might occur, then an armistice, and then "We, Us and 
Company " would walk in with our red tape and cir- 
cumlocution office, and tie up everything better than 
before. So Scott spread his maps and talked cheer- 
fully, and the Washington cabinet congratulated one 
another. "This is to be my last campaign," said 
Scott, "and I mean it to be my best." 

The country listened with earnest ears now to what 
our chief military man said. When the father of a 
family is lying between life and death, there is no 
more laughing at the doctor — and in the solemn hush 
that preceded real war, there was no more sneering at 
old Fuss and Feathers. People wanted to believe in 
him. They searched out his old exploits, talked of 
his old successes, that they might hope and believe 
that they had a deliverer and a leader in their midst. 



A GENERAL WANTED. 113 

Slowly, surely, it began to appear through many a 
defeat, many a disaster; through days and nights 
when men's hearts failed them for fear, and for looking 
for the things that were coming on the earth ; through 
all such signs and wonders as usher in great convul- 
sions of society — it began to be manifested that this 
nation was in a contest for which there were no prece- 
dents, which was to be as wide as from ocean to ocean, 
which was to number its forces by millions, and for 
which all former rules and ordinances of war, all rec- 
ords of campaigns and battles, were as mere obsolete 
ballads and old songs. The inquiry began to grow 
more urgent : Who is to be our General ? 

General Scott professed that the work was too great 
for him, but he called to his right hand and presented 
to the nation one whom he delighted to honor, and 
who was announced with songs and cheerings as the 
young Napoleon of America. 

The nation received him with acclamation. They 
wanted a young Napoleon. A young Napoleon was 
just what they needed, and a young Napoleon there- 
fore they were determined to believe that they had ; 
and for a while nothing was heard but his praises. 
Every loyal paper was on its knees in humble expect- 
ancy, to admire and to defend, but not to criticise. 
Mothers were ready to send their sons to his banner ; 
millionaires offered the keys of their treasure chests 
for his commissariat ; the administration bowed to his 
lightest suggestion, gave him all he asked, hung on 
his lightest word. Everywhere he moved amid vic- 
torious plaudits, the palms and honors of victory 



114 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

everywhere credited to him in advance by the fond 
faith of the whole nation. 

We waited for victories. Our men were burning 
with enthusiasm — begging, praying to be led to the 
field, and yet nothing was done. "It takes time to 
create an army," was the first announcement of our 
chief. We gave him time, and he spent it in reviews, 
in preparations, in fortifications and entrenchments. 
The time he took gave the enemy just what they stood 
in perishing need of — time to organize, concentrate, 
drill, arrange with Europe, and get ready for a four 
years' conflict. 

It was God's will that we should have a four years' 
war, and therefore when we looked for a leader he 
sent us Gen. McClellan. 

It was God's will that this nation — the North as 
well as the South — should deeply and terribly suffer 
for the sin of consenting to and encouraging the great 
oppressions of the South ; that the ill-gotten wealth 
which had arisen from striking hands with oppression 
and robbery, should be paid back in the taxes of war ; 
that the blood of the poor slave, that had cried so 
many years from the ground in vain, should be an- 
swered by the blood of the sons from the best hearth 
stones through all the free States; that the slave 
mothers, whose tears nobody regarded, should have 
with them a great company of weepers, North and 
South — Rachels weeping for their children and refus- 
ing to be comforted ; that the free States, who refused 
to listen when they were told of lingering starvation, 
cold, privation and barbarous cruelty, as perpetrated 
on the slave, should have lingering starvation, cold, 



god's revenge against slavery. 115 

hunger and cruelty doing its work among their own 
sons, at the hands of these slave masters, with whose 
sins our nation had connived. 

General McClellan was like those kings &nd leaders 
we read of in the Old Testament, whom God sent to 
a people with a purpose of wrath and punishment. 

Slowly, through those dark days of rebuke and disas- 
ter, did the people come at last to a consciousness that 
they had trusted in vain — that such a continued series 
of disasters were not exceptions and accidents, but 
evidences of imbecility and incompetence in the gov- 
erning power. 

Meanwhile the magnitude of this colossal war had 
fully revealed itself — a war requiring combinations 
and forces before unheard of, as different from those 
of European battles as the prairies of the West differ 
from Salisbury Plain, or the Mississippi from the 
Thames — and we again feverishly asked, Where is our 
leader ? 

We had faith that some man was to arise ; but 
where was he? Now one General, and now another 
took the place of power, and we hoped and confided, 
till disaster and reverses came and threw us on our 
unanswered inquiry. 

Now it is very remarkable that in all great crises 
and convulsions of society, the man of the hour gen- 
erally comes from some obscure quarter — silently, 
quietly, unannounced, unheralded, without prestige, 
and makes his way alone and single-handed. 

John the Baptist said to the awakened crowd, thril- 
ling with vague expectation of a coming Messiah, 
"There standeth one among you whom ye know not," 



116 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

and the same declaration might amount to a general 
principle, which would hold good in most cases when 
the wants of a new era in society call for a new leader. 

When France lay convulsed after the terrible up- 
heavings of the French revolution, there was one man 
strong enough to govern her, to bring back settled 
society, law and order — but he was doing duty in an 
obscure place as corporal of artillery ; and in like 
manner when the American war broke out, the Gen- 
eral who was to be strong enough, and wise enough, 
and energetic enough to lead our whole army to vic- 
tory, was an obscure, silent, sensible man, who was 
keeping a leather and saddle store in Galena, 111. 

He was a man principally to be noted for saying 
little, and doing with certainty and completeness the 
duty he happened to have in hand. If he failed in any 
of the points required in a successful store-keeper in a 
Western town, it was in the gift of talking. He had 
no opinions on politics, no theories about the govern- 
ment of the country, to put at the service of custom- 
ers. The petty squabbles of local politics he despised. 
When one endeavored to engage him in a discussion 
of some such matter, he is said to have answered : 

" I don't know any thing of party politics, and I 
don't want to. There is one subject on which I feel 
perfectly at home. Talk to me of that and I shall be 
happy to hear you." 

"What is that?" 

" Tanning leather." 

Yet this quiet man, who confined his professions of 
knowledge entirely to the business he took in hand, 
was an educated man, who had passed with credit 



grant's puritan descent. 117" 

through the military academy at West Point, gradu- 
ated with honor, been promoted for meritorious ser- 
vice in the Mexican war to the rank of captain, and 
whose powers of conversation, when he chooses to 
converse on any subject befitting an educated man, 
are said by those who know him best, to be quite 
remarkable. 

In these sketches of our distinguished men, we have, 
whenever possible, searched somewhat into their ped- 
igree ; for we have firm faith in the old maxim that 
blood will tell. 

It is interesting to know that there are authentic 
documents existing, by which Gen. Grant's family may 
be traced through a line of Puritan patriots far back 
to England. 

A gentleman in Hartford, justly celebrated for his 
research in these matters, has kindly offered us the 
following particulars : 

" On the first page of a thick little memorandum 
book which is now before me, well preserved in its 
original sheepskin binding, are the following entries, 
the obsolete spelling of which sufficiently attests their 
antiquity : 

May the 29 16. 45, Mathew Grant and Susanna ware 
maried. 

Mathew Grant was then three and fortey yeares of 
age, seven moneths and eyghtene dayes ; borne in the 
yeare, 1601. October 27 Tuesdaye. 

Susannah Graunt was then three and fourtey yeares 
of age seuen weeks & 4 dayes ; borne in the yeare 
1602 April the 5 Mondaye." 

This, as appears, was a second marriage, and Susan- 



118 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

nah was widow of one William Rockwell ; and im- 
mediately after the record, follow the names of the 
children of her first marriage, five in number. Ruth 
Rockwell, the second daughter of Susannah Grant, 
married Christopher Huntington, of Norwich, and 
their great granddaughter, Martha Huntington, mar- 
ried Noah Grant, a great grandson of Mathew. 

From this marriage came a second Noah Grant, who 
was a captain in the old French war, and afterwards 
settled in Coventry, Conn. The third son of this 
Captain Noah Grant, who also bore the name of Noah, 
resided in Coventry, and had a son named for the 
Hon. Jesse Root, Chief Justice of the Superior Court 
of Connecticut from 1796 to 1807, and this Jesse Root 
Grant is the father of Ulysses S. Grant, the man whom 
this war anointed to be our leader and captain. 

The Mathew and Susanna Grant whose marriage 
record is here given, came first to America in the 
Mary and John, in the company which settled Dor- 
chester, Mass., in 1630. They sailed from Plymouth, 
in Devonshire, March 20th, and arrived at Nantasket, 
May 30th. 

The style and spirit of these colonists may be in- 
ferred from the following words of Roger Clap, who 
was one of the passengers : 

"These godly people resolved to live together; 
and therefore they made choice of these two reverend 
servants of God, Mr. John Wareham, and Mr. John 
Maverick, to be their ministers ; so they kept a solemn 
day of fasting in the New Hospital in Plymouth, Eng- 
land, spending it in preaching and praying ; where 
that worthy man of God, Mr. John White, of Dorches- 



grant's puritan descent. 119 

ter, in Dorset, was present and preached unto us the 
Word of God, in the fore part of the day, and in the 
latter part of the day. As the people did solemnly 
make choice of and call those godly ministers to their 
office, so also the Rev. Mr. Wareham and Mr. Maver- 
ick did accept thereof, and expressed the same. So 
we came by the good hand of the Lord through the 
deeps comfortably." 

Thus Mathew Grant and his brethren, even before 
leaving the old country, were gathered into church 
estate for the new, and the planters of Dorchester came 
thither as a Puritan church, duly organized, with their 
chosen and ordained pastor and teacher. In 1635-6, 
Mr. Wareham and a great part of his flock removed to 
Connecticut, and settled a new Dorchester, afterwards 
named Windsor. Mathew Grant was one of these 
earlier settlers, and was from the first a prominent man 
in the church and town. For many years he was the 
principal surveyor of lands in Windsor, town clerk 
and deacon, and the church records speak highly of 
his blameless life. He died in 1681, at the age of 
eighty. 

Thus from the little body of men who assembled 
with fasting and prayer in Plymouth, to form them- 
selves into a New England colony, descended in the 
course of time, a leader and commander that was to 
stay up the hands of our great nation in the time of 
its severest trial. 

The genealogist who has traced the pedigree of 
Grant back to England, remarks, that in the veins of 
his family was, by successive marriages, intermingled 



120 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

the blood of many of the best old New England fam- 
ilies. 

Gen. Grant is a genuine son of New England, there- 
fore to be looked on as a vigorous offshoot of the old 
Puritan stock. His father removed from Coventry, 
first to Pennsylvania, afterwards to Ohio, and finally 
to Illinois, where the Ulysses of these many wander- 
ings received his classic name. He appears to be a 
man of no ordinary class for shrewdness and good 
sense. Gen. Grant's mother is one of those sedate, 
sensible, serious women, whose households are fit 
nurseries for heroes. Industry, economy, patience, 
temperance and religion, were the lessons of his early 
days. The writer of the " Tanner Boy " has embodied, 
probably on good authority, some anecdotes of the 
childhood of the boy, which show that there was in 
him good stuff to make a man of. One of these is 
worth telling: 

" I want you to drive the team to such a spot in the 
woods," said the father, " where you will find the men 
ready to load it with logs, and you will then drive it 
home." 

The boy drove to the spot, found the logs, but no 
men. 

Instead of sitting down to crack nuts and wait, as 
most boys would, Ulysses said to himself, " I was sent 
to bring these logs, and bring them I must, men or no 
men," and so by some ingenious mechanical arrange- 
ments, he succeeded in getting them on to the cart 
alone, and drove home with them quietly, as if it were 
a matter of course. 



WEST POINT CAREER. 121 

"Why, my son," exclaimed his father, "where are 
the men ? " 

" I don't know, and I don't care," said the boy. " I 
got the load without them." 

This boy was surely father to the man who took 
Vicksburg. 

There are other anecdotes given of his fighting a 
schoolboy who traduced Washington ; of his steady 
perseverance in his school studies; and of a school 
saying of his, that can't was never a word in his dic- 
tionary. His industry and energy caused his appoint- 
ment to West Point, where the young tanner boy took 
rank with the scions of the so-styled Southern aristoc- 
racy. It is recorded in his new position that certain 
sneers on his industrial calling were promptly resisted, 
and that he insisted upon the proper deference to 
himself and his order, as a boy of the working class as, 
and maintained it by a stalwart good right aim, 
which nobody cared to bring down in anger. 

Grant graduated with respectable credit from West 
Point, in 1843. He is said to have been the best 
rider in his class, but not remarkable otherwise. In 
the same class were Gen. W. B. Franklin, Gen. I. T. 
Quimby, Gen. J. J. Reynolds, Gen. C. C. Augur, Gen. 
C. S. Hamilton, Gen. F. Steele, Gen. R. Ingalls, and 
Gen. H. M. Judah, all useful and a number of them 
eminent officers in the Union Army during the Rebell- 
ion. There were also in the same class several mem- 
bers who adhered to the rebel cause ; R. S. Ripley, S. 
G. French, F. Gardner, who surrendered Port Hudson 
to Gen. Banks, E. B. Holloway, and one or two others. 
At his graduation, no second lieutenancy was vacant 



122 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

in the United States Army, and Grant therefore re- 
ceived a brevet commission as second lieutenant in the 
Fourth United States Infantry. With his regiment or 
detachments of it, he now served for a time on the 
western frontier, near St. Louis, up the Red River, 
and elsewhere. When in 1845, Gen. Taylor was or- 
dered into Texas, the Fourth Regiment and Grant 
with it formed part of his force, and they continued 
in active service throughout the Mexican War. In 
this war, Lieutenant Grant showed great readiness, 
sense, and courage. He was in every one of its im- 
portant battles except Buena Vista ; to us the words 
of one of his eulogists, " in all the battles in which 
any one man could be." He was repeatedly men- 
tioned in the reports of his commanding officers for 
meritorious conduct. He was appointed first Lieuten- 
ant on the field of battle, at Molino del Rey, for gal- 
lantry ; and was breveted Captain for meritorious con- 
duct in the battle of Chapultepec. 

In 1848, after the end of the war, Capt. Grant mar- 
ried a Miss Dent, from near St. Louis, and for some 
years lived in the monotonous routine of the peace es- 
tablishment ; at Detroit, at Sackett's Harbor, and in 
Oregon. To this period of his life belongs a story 
that being a good chess player, and very fond of the 
game, he found while at Sackett's Harbor an opponent 
of superior force. With this champion our stubborn 
infantry captain used to play, and as regularly to get 
beaten. But he played on, and was accustomed to in- 
sist upon protracting the sitting until his opponent 
had actually become so tired that his mind would not 



ENLISTS FOR THE WAR. 123 

work; when Grant would comfortably balance the 
account. 

His full commission as captain reached him in Aug- 
ust, 1853, but in 1854, having made up his mind that 
there was to be a long peace, he resigned his captain- 
cy and set about establishing himself in civil life. His 
first attempt was, to manage a small farm to the south- 
west of St. Louis, where he used to cut wood and haul 
it to Carondelet, delivering it himself. He diversified 
his year during summer, with acting as a collector of 
debts in that region. But there is nothing to show 
that he enjoyed either wood cutting or dunning, and 
he certainly did not grow rich at them. In 1859, he 
tried in vain to get the appointment of county engin- 
eer ; and he then went into the leather trade, in part- 
nership with his father, at Galena. The firm quickly 
attained high standing for intelligence and integrity, 
and the business, at the breaking out of the war, was 
prosperous. 

It is narrated that Grant's determination to enter 
the service against the rebellion was taken and stated 
along with the drawing on of his coat, instantly upon 
reading the telegram which announced the surrender 
of Sumter. He came into the store in the morning, 
read the dispatch, and as he took up his coat, which 
he had laid off, and put it on again, he observed in 
his quiet way, " The government educated me for the 
army, and although I have served through one war, I 
am still a little in debt to the government, and willing 
to discharge the obligation." 

Grant, bringing with him a company of volunteers 
that he had enlisted, in a few days appeared in the 



124 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

council-chamber of governor Yates, of Illinois, and ten- 
dered his services to the country as volunteer. The 
governor immediately proposed to place him on his 
own staff, as mustering officer of volunteers. Grant 
expressed a wish for more active service, but was over- 
ruled for the time by the wishes of the governor, 
who represented that his military education and expe- 
rience would be of great advantage in forming the 
raw material now to be made into an army. 

In this comparatively humble sphere Grant began 
his second military career. He did with all his might 
whatever he did, and his exertions in obtaining volun- 
teers were such that the quota of Illinois was more 
than full at the appointed time, and at once set in the 
field. In June, 1861, he entered actual service, with 
the rank of colonel of volunteers ; and took hold of 
work with such purpose and efficiency that he was 
almost immediately elevated to be Brigadier General. 

The patriotic and energetic Governor Yates, gives 
the following account of the first months of Grant's 
services during the Rebellion. 

"In April, 1861, he tendered his personal services 
to me, saying, that he ' had been the recipient of a 
military education at West Point, and that now, when 
the country was involved in a war for its preservation 
and safety, he thought it his duty to offer his services 
in defense of the Union, and that he would esteem it 
a privilege to be assigned to any position where he 
could be useful.' The plain, straightforward demeanor 
of the man, and the modesty and earnestness which 
characterized his offer of assistance, at once awakened 
a lively interest in him, and impressed me with a de- 



FIRST DAYS OF THE WAR. 125 

sire to secure his counsel for the benefit of volunteer 
organization then forming for Government service. At 
first I assigned him a desk in the Executive office ; 
and his familiarity with military organization and reg- 
ulations made him an invaluable assistant in my own 
and the office of the Adjutant-General. Soon his ad- 
mirable qualities as a military commander became appa- 
rent, and I assigned him to command of the camps of 
organization at ' Camp Yates,' Springfield, ' Camp 
Grant,' Mattoon, and ' Camp Douglas,' at Anna, Union 
County. * * * " The Twenty-first regiment of 
Illinois volunteers, * * * had become very much 
demoralized under the thirty days' experiment, and 
doubts arose in relation to their acceptance for a long- 
er period. I was much perplexed to find an efficient 
and experienced officer to take command of the regi- 
ment, and take it into the three years' service. * * 
* I decided to offer the command to Captain Grant, 
at Covington, Kentucky, tendering him the colonelcy. 
He immediately reported, accepting the commission, 
taking rank as colonel of that regiment from the 15th 
of June, 1861. Thirty days previous to that time, 
the regiment numbered over one thousand men ; but 
in consequence of laxity of discipline of the first com- 
manding officer, and other discouraging obstacles con- 
nected with the acceptance of troops at that time, 
but six hundred and three men were found willing to 
enter the three years' service. In less than ten days 
Colonel Grant filled the regiment to the maximum 
standard, and brought it to a state of discipline sel- 
dom attained in the volunteer service in so short a 
time. His was the only regiment that left the camp of 



126 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

organization on foot. * * * Colonel Grant was 
afterwards assigned to command for the protection 
of the Quincy and Palmyra, and Hannibal and St. 
Josephs Railroads. He soon distinguished himself as 
a regimental commander in the field, and his claims 
for increased rank were recognized by his friends in 
Springfield, and his promotion insisted upon, before 
his merits and services were fairly understood at 
Washington," 

Grant's brigadier's commission reached him August 
9th, 1861, and his first service under it was, a march to 
Ironton, in Missouri, for the purpose of preventing an 
attack from the rebel Jeff Thompson. Grant had 
already once declined a brigadiership when offered 
him by Gov. Yates, for the reason that he considered 
the appointment more properly due to another per- 
son ; but though the youngest of the colonels in Mis- 
souri, he had been acting brigadier there. 

Soon after this he was placed in command at the 
great central point of Cairo, which was the key of the 
West. 

The country was full of confusion and disorder. 
Rebel sympathizers every where, openly and secretly, 
were embarrassing the Federal and assisting the rebel 
army. The professedly neutral State of Kentucky 
was used as the camping ground and retreat of these 
forces which thus annoyed our army. Grant quietly 
determined to command this dangerous territory. 
He took the town of Paducah, a strong post on the 
Ohio River, near the mouth of the Tennessee River, 
in Kentucky, by which he at once gained possession of 
interior navigable waters, which the traitors had been 



PADUCAH CAMPAIGN. 127 

using for their own purposes. The strength and de- 
cision with which he took possession of the town in- 
timidated all rebel sympathizers. He then issued the 
following address to the inhabitants, which is as good 
a specimen of condensed and effective military style 
as we have on record : 

" I am come among you, not as an enemy, but as 
your fellow- American ; not to maltreat and annoy you, 
but to respect and enforce the rights of all loyal citi- 
zens. I am here to defend you against the common 
enemy, who has planted his guns on your soil, and 
fired upon you ; and to assist the authority and sov- 
ereignty of your government. I have nothing to do 
with opinions, and shall deal only with armed rebell- 
ion and its aiders and abetters. You can pursue your 
usual avocations without fear. The strong arm of the 
government is here to protect its friends, and punish 
its enemies. Whenever it is manifest that you are 
able to defend yourselves, maintain the authority of 
the government, and protect the rights of loyal citi- 
zens, I shall withdraw the forces under my command. 

U. S. Grant, 

Brig. Gen. Commanding. 

While in command at Cairo, Grant used to dress 
rather carelessly, very much after Gen. Taylor's fash- 
ion; he went about wearing an old " stove-pipe hat," 
and always with a cigar. Some one, it is said, once 
jeered about the "stove-pipe general" and his cigars, 
and was silenced by the reply that "such a bright 
stove-pipe might be excused for smoking." 



128 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

The remainder of General Grant's military career 
must be narrated with a brevity which by no means 
does justice to the subject. It may be said to con- 
sist of five campaigns ; those of Fort Donelson, Cor- 
inth and Iuka, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, and Rich- 
mond. Of these, each pointed out its commander as 
the best man for the next, until by simple upward 
gravitation of natural fitness, he rose to his present 
great military post of general of all the armies of the 
United States. 

Grant's operations in Northern Missouri, his dash 
on Belmont, and his seizure of Paducah, though all 
creditable military services, were thrown into the 
shade by the brilliant Fort Donelson campaign, which 
opened the career of Union successes in the West. 

The Fort Donelson expedition was intended to 
break in two the rebel defensive line, which stretched 
the whole length of the State of Kentucky, from Co- 
lumbus on the Mississippi, through Bowling Green, to 
Cumberland Gap. On this line, the rebels, under 
General A. S. Johnston, stood looking northward with 
threatening and defiant aspect. Grant saw that if he 
could seize Forts Henry and Donelson, which had been 
built to shut up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, 
the Union gunboats could range up and down through 
the heart of rebeldom, and the Union armies with 
them, and that thus the great rebel defensive line, cut 
through in the middle, would be broken as a chain is 
when a link is destroyed. He therefore asked leave 
of his immediate superior, Halleck, to take the forts ; 
received it, concerted his plan of attack with Admiral 
Foote, and moved from Cairo, February 2d, 1862. 



FORT DONELSON CAMPAIGN. 129 

The success of this expedition is well known. It 
should be recorded, however, even in this short sum- 
mary, that to Grant is due the credit of possessing the 
military tact and promptness that showed him when 
to make the decisive attack, and impelled him to do 
it. This time was after that considerable success of 
the rebel sally from Fort Donelson on Saturday, Feb. 
15th, under Pillow, which drove away so large a por- 
tion of the Union army from its place, and indeed left 
room enough for the whole rebel force to walk out of 
the fort and escape, if they had so chosen. This was 
done while Grant had gone to consult with Admiral 
Foote. When he came back, and saw how his troops 
had been driven, to any common mind the case would 
have seemed a pretty bad one ; but Grant really does 
not appear to have seen any bad side to any case he 
had charge of during the war. At Belmont, when he 
was told that he was surrounded, he simply answered, 
" Well, then, we must cut our way out." His own de- 
scription, afterwards given to Gen. Sherman, at Shiloh, 
of the impression now made on his mind by seeing how 
his troops had been pounded and driven, was as fol- 
lows : " On riding upon the field, I saw that either side 
was ready to give way if the other showed a bold 
front. I took the opportunity, and ordered an advance 
along the whole line." In both cases, the thing was 
done. 

At daylight on Sunday, the 16th, Gen. Buckner, 
(whose two superior officers, Floyd and Pillow, had 
run away,) sent a flag of truce asking for commission- 
ers to consider terms of capitulation. Grant replied 
by the bearer, in a letter, two of whose phrases have 



130 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

I 

become permanent contributions to the proverbial part 
of the English language : 

"Yours of this date, proposing an armistice, and 
appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capit- 
ulation, is just received. No terms other than uncon- 
ditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I 
propose to move immediately upon your works." 

Buckner's reply was in a very disgusted tone, and 
it may be excused to him under the circumstances, 
that he used some very curious explanatory phrases, 
and that he called names. But he came down, though 
it was from an extremely high horse, rejoining : 

"The distribution of the forces under my command, 
incident to an unexpected change of commanders, and 
the overwhelming force under your command, compel 
me, notwithstanding the brilliant success of the con- 
federate arms yesterday, to accept the ungenerous and 
unchivalrous terms which you propose." 

The correctness of Grant's estimate of this whole 
movement was well proved by its instantaneous result 
— the evacuation of Columbus at one end of the rebel 
line, and of Bowling Green in the middle, and the 
falling back of the whole rebellion down to the south- 
ern boundary of Tennessee. The first great victory 
since Bull Run, the first important campaign in the 
West, it encouraged and elevated the spirits of the 
whole North, and in equal measure it alarmed and en- 
feebled the South. It had flung back the rebellion 
two hundred miles, along the whole length of Ken- 
tucky, across that State and Tennessee. With soldier- 
ly promptitude and energy, Grant followed up his vic- 
tory by pushing the enemy, according to the Napole- 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH. 131 

ouic maxim, that "victory is, to march ten leagues, 
beat the enemy, and pursue him ten leagues more." 

Immediately after Donelson, Grant was made major 
general of volunteers by commission dated on the day 
of the fall of the fort, and was placed in command of 
the "Military District of West Tennessee," consisting 
of a long triangle with its northern point at Cairo, its 
base at the south, on the Mississippi State line, and its 
sides the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers. Thus pro- 
moted, Grant had already pushed southward. Foote's 
gunboats ascended the Cumberland, the troops kept 
abreast of them ; Clarksville, with twenty days' sub- 
sistence for Grant's whole army, was occupied on Feb. 
20th, four days after the capture of Donelson ; and 
on the 23d, the advance of Buell's army, operating in 
conjunction with Grant's, entered Nashville. 

When the rebel military line already mentioned, 
running lengthwise of the State of Kentucky, was 
broken up by Grant's getting through and behind it 
at Fort Donelson, the rebel leaders sought to hold 
another east and west line, coinciding nearly with the 
southern line of Tennessee, along the important Mem- 
phis and Charleston Railroad, and their commander in 
the West, Albert Sydney Johnston, set about concen- 
trating his forces at Corinth, on that road. Halleck, 
by this time commanding the whole Department of 
the Mississippi, now prepared to attack Corinth. It 
was with this design that Grant's army was sent up 
the Tennessee, and encamped at Shiloh. But the 
rebels did not wait to be attacked. They advanced 
themselves, with the bold and judicious design of 
beating the army at Shiloh, and then of marching 



132 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

northward, regaining all the ground they had lost, 
and retaliating by an invasion of the States north of 
the Ohio. 

This hardy attempt was well nigh successful. The 
night before the battle of Shiloh, Beauregard, as the 
rebel council of war separated, had prophesied: "To- 
morrow night we sleep in the enemy's camp." The 
sudden and vehement assault of the morning, main- 
tained with tremendous and pertinacious fury all day 
long, had steadily crushed the Union army backward 
towards the Tennessee river, until towards sunset it 
had been pounded into a heterogeneous, irregular line 
of desperate fighters, and behind them a great mass 
of terrified and disheartened runaways, hiding under 
the river bank. What the heathen called Fortune, 
what Christians recognize as an overruling Providence, 
caused a conjuncture of circumstances by which, be- 
tween night and morning, the relative number and 
spirits of the troops on both sides, and the result of 
the fight, were totally reversed. These circumstances 
were, the powerful resistance offered, at the end of 
the Sunday's disastrous fight, to the final charges of 
the rebels, by the artillery massed at the left end or 
key of the Union position, close to the river ; by the 
further obstacle of a ravine stretching back from the 
river before the Union lines just at that point ; by 
the powerful effect of the monstrous shells sent up 
this ravine and into the rebel lines from the two Union 
gunboats, Tyler and Lexington ; and finally, by the 
coming upon the field of the advance of Buell's army. 
Beauregard's men slept in the Union camp, as he had 
said, but during the night Buell's troops and Gen. Lewis 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH. 133 

Wallace's division came upon the field. Monday morn- 
ing, instead of last night's picture of 30,000 rebels, 
flushed with all day's victory, against at most 23,000 
disorganized and all but overpowered Union troops, 
the daylight broke on a Union army of 50,000, being 
Grant's 23,000, somewhat refreshed and reorganized, 
and entirely inspirited; and 27,000 reinforcements, 
fresh and unbroken ; while the rebel army, exhausted 
by its own efforts, had received no increase, had lost 
by stragglers, had rested ill in the cold rain, and had 
been all night long awakened every few minutes by 
the unwelcome reveillee of the great gunboat shells that 
were flung amongst them from the river. Weary and 
overweighted as they were, the rebels fought well, 
however, and it was not until four in the afternoon 
that they retreated, fighting still, and in good order, 
toward Corinth, whence they had set out. 

When the rebels first attacked, Grant was at Savan- 
nah, seven miles down the river. Hastening back, he 
was on the field at the earliest possible moment, and 
did whatever could be done to withstand the tremen- 
dous force of the rebel advance. When Buell came 
upon the field toward night, the aspect of affairs so 
struck him that his first inquiry of Grant was, what 
preparations he had made for retreat. 

"I have not despaired of whipping them yet," was 
the thoroughly characteristic reply. One account adds, 
that when Buell urged that a prudent general ought 
to provide for possibilities of defeat, and repeated his 
inquiry, Grant pointed to his transports and said, 
" Don't you see those boats ?" "Yes," said Buell, "but 
they will not carry more than ten thousand, and we have 



134 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

more than thirty thousand." "Well," returned Grant, 
" ten thousand are more than I mean to retreat with." 
One prominent, elaborate and ambitious account of 
this battle, by a writer who has been complimented 
as "the Napier of the War," is visibly framed with the 
intention of omitting Grant entirely from this battle ; 
since no part of the narrative suggests that he gave a 
sniffle order, or shows that he was on the field. But 
this slander by omission is utterly gratuitous. General 
Sherman's report tells how Grant " was early on the 
field, and visited his (Sherman's) division in person 
about ten A. M., when the battle was raging fiercely;" 
and again, how Grant, who had been on the field and 
frequently under fire, all day long, returned to him at 
5 P. M., and explained the situation of the rest of the 
field. Sherman adds, " he agreed that the enemy had 
expended the force of his attack, and we estimated 
our loss and approximated our then strength. 

* He then ordered me to get all things ready, and 
at daylight the next day to assume the offensive. * 

* * I know I had orders from General Grant to as- 
sume the offensive before I knew General Buell was 
on the west side of the Tennessee." It was doubtless 
at this time that Grant made to Sherman the remark 
already quoted, as to the readiness of either side, at 
Donelson, to retreat. 

Another witness, who, unlike our deceitful "Napier 
of the Rebellion," was on the field of Shiloh, describes 
how " throughout the battle, Grant rode to and fro 
on the front, smoking his inevitable cigar, with his usual 
stolidity and good fortune ; horses and men were killed 
all around him, but he did not receive a scratch." 



THE BATTLE OF SHILOH. 135 

The consequence of Shiloh was, the withdrawal of 
the rebels from their second line of defence, by their 
evacuation of Corinth on the 30th of May, seven 
weeks afterwards, the disappointment both of their 
great plan of a northern invasion and of their secon- 
dary plan of holding the Memphis and Charleston 
Railroad line, and the opening of all Tennessee, and 
the North of Mississippi and Alabama, to the Union 
forces ; the opening of the Mississippi River from 
Memphis down to Vicksburg ; the subsequent move- 
ment which resulted in the battle of Murfreesboro 
and the securing of Chattanooga on the east ; and 
the series of efforts which culminated in the capture 
of Vicksburg on the west. In short, this battle flung 
the Rebellion, in the Valley of the Mississippi, into a 
defensive posture, out of which it never escaped dur- 
ing the remainder of the war. 

A few days after the proclamation which gave free- 
dom to the slaves, General Grant expressed his con- 
currence in it after his sober fashion, by a dry phrase 
in a general order on the subject of organizing colored 
regiments. "It is expected," he says, "that all com- 
manders will especially exert themselves in carrying 
out the policy of the administration, not only in or- 
ganizing colored regiments, and rendering them effec- 
tive, but also in removing prejudice against them." 

The taking of Fort Donelson had given Grant a 
reputation as a prompt and vigorous fighter, and a 
sensible commander. The battle of Shiloh, when its 
extremely important results came to be understood, 
added to his reputation in a proportionate degree. 
While therefore one line of operations was decided 



lob ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

upon, which pointed eastward and was to end in the oc- 
cupation of Chattanooga, Rosecrans being placed in 
command, to the westward and southward, a second 
great enterprise was aimed, which was entrusted to 
Grant ; which should end in the occupation of Yicks- 
burg, and should thus complete the task which the 
men of the northwest had proposed to themselves at 
the beginning of the war, of " hewing their way to 
the sea." 

Yicksburg and Port Hudson were now the only re- 
maining two of that series of positions, most of them 
really impregnable from the river, by which the rebels 
had throttled the great artery of western commerce. 

His previous career naturally enough pointed out 
Grant for the command of the Yicksburg campaign ; 
and the event showed that his absolute inability to let 
go where he had once taken hold, his inevitable con- 
tinuance in hammering at his object, were exactly the 
qualities needed. 

For a little while, General Halleck himself came and 
commanded in person against Corinth, General Grant 
being second in command. It was during this period 
that both the two occasions occurred, which are said 
to have been the only ones when Grant was ever known 
to lose his temper. His steady nature and calm good 
humor had become proverbial among his fellows even 
while he was a student ; for about the time of his leav- 
ing West Point, the cadets said of him, to use his 
father's words, that the only difficulty about him was, 
that " if he ever was engaged in war, he was too good 
natured to be kicked into a fight." The two occa- 
sions spoken of are said to have been ; one, when he 



THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN. 137 

discovered a soldier defiling the water of a clear 
spring; and the other, when he wished to "move at 
once upon the works " of Beauregard at Corinth, ten 
days before General Halleck was ready ; as he saw 
that by so doing the whole rebel army in the place 
could be taken. Of his urgency with Halleck, his 
father Mr. Jesse R. Grant, says, "He (Grant) is sure 
he used stronger language to General Halleck than 
he had ever used before to any person, and expected 
to be arrested and tried. But the General said to him, 
1 If I had let you take your own course, you would 
have taken the rebel army. Hereafter I will not dic- 
tate to you about the management of an army ! ' " 

Halleck now left, being appointed General-in-Chief; 
and Grant remained in command of the Army of the 
Tennessee, and of the military districts of Cairo, West 
Tennessee and Mississippi. The rebels knew as well 
as he that his face was set steadfastly towards Vicks- 
burg ; and to begin with, they attacked his troops at 
Corinth and Iuka in great force and with tremendous 
fury, in order to break up his plans. At both places 
they were however defeated. In October, the rebel 
General Pemberton was placed in command in North- 
ern Mississippi, and in the last two months of 1862, 
took place Grant's first attempt against Vicksburg. 
The place had already been attacked by the two pow- 
erful fleets of Farragut and Davis, during seventy 
days, from the preceding May 18th to July 27th; but 
though 25,000 shot and shell had been thrown into 
it, not one gun had been dismounted, and only seven 
men were killed and fifteen wounded ; a result which 



138 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

showed plainly enough how the place was to be taken 
if at all. 

Grant's movement was to be by land, southward 
from his post at Corinth, directly at Pemberton; 
while Sherman was to get footing if possible close to 
Vicksburg. The loss of Grant's main depot of sup- 
plies at Holly Springs, midway in his progress, broke 
down his part of the plan, and Pemberton then rein- 
forcing Vicksburg, repulsed Sherman and broke down 
the rest of it. 

Grant now established his head-quarters at Memphis, 
January 10th, 1863, and moved his army towards his 
goal by water. On the 2d of February, he reached 
Young's Point, a little above the city ; his army was 
already there and at Milliken's Bend, just below. 

His purpose was one ; to get his army across to the 
Vicksburg side and thence to prosecute his attack. 
First he tried a canal across the neck of the river 
peninsula opposite Vicksburg. Through this, if he 
could get the water to accept it as a new bed, he could 
take his forces below the city, out of reach of its guns, 
and cross over. But a flood burst into the unfinished 
canal and drowned out the plan. Then he tried to 
clear out a longer water route to do the same thing, 
through a string of bayous and rivers back in the Lou- 
isiana swamps. A fall in the river broke up this plan, 
as a rise had done that before it. Then he tried a 
longer route of the same sort, beginning at Lake 
Providence, seventy-five miles north of Vicksburg, but 
it was found impracticable. Then resorting to the east 
side of the Mississippi, he sent a naval expedition to 
try to penetrate Yazoo Pass, and thence through the 



THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN. 139 

inconceivable tangle of the Yazoo swamps and their 
rivers, to get behind the outer rebel defences north of 
Vicksburg, and so make a lodgment. But this plan 
was checkmated by the hasty erection in the heart of 
the swamp region, at the junction of the Tallahatchie 
and Yazoo Rivers, of a powerful fort, which the fleet 
tried in vain to silence. Then he sent another fleet to 
try another part of the same monstrous tangle, by way 
of the Big Sunflower River, but that effort miscarried 
much as the preceding one did. 

The obstinate commander had now tried six assaults 
upon his prey, and had been busily working at his 
failures for nearly four months. March 29th, 1863, he 
set his forces in motion for the seventh and successful 
effort. This was by what he had in fact recognized 
from the beginning as the best line of operation — by 
the south. It was however also the most difficult. 
As one of the historians of the war observes, a meas- 
ure of the difficulties offered is given by the fact that 
General W. T. Sherman was not disposed to advise it. 
The same writer adds, "It can only be said that there 
was that in the composition of General Grant's mind 
that prompted him to undertake that which no one 
else would have adventured." 

Colonel Grierson's cavalry force was now launched 
down from Tennessee to go tearing through the whole 
interior of Mississippi, and thoroughly frighten all its 
people, while he should break up > as he circuited far 
around Yicksburg, as many as possible of the railroads, 
bridges, and other means of communication, leading 
from the city back into the country, or from one part 
of the State to another. Grant's own troops moved 



140 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

clown the river a total distance of seventy -five miles. 
The fleet and transports ran the batteries and ferried 
the army across at Bruinsburg ; Grant moved at once 
three miles inland, and May 1st, beat Gen. Bowen at 
Port Gibson. Then he moved eastward, drove John- 
ston out of Jackson, an important center for railroad 
lines, and broke up all the communications in the 
neighborhood ; then turning short about, he approach- 
ed Vicksburg by forced marches; on May 10th met 
Pemberton at Champion Hills and defeated him ; fol- 
lowed him sharply up, forced the passage of the Big 
Black, drove Pemberton into the city, and on May 
16th had formed his lines of attack. After a vigorous 
siege, whose progress attracted the attention of the 
whole civilized world, the place surrendered with 
27,000 men, on July 4th, 1863. The whole number 
of prisoners made since crossing the Mississippi was 
37,000. This great achievement freed the Mississippi, 
cut the rebellion in two, and rendered it out of the 
question for the rebels to hold the Mississippi Valley. 
The taking of Yicksburg was remarkable, not so 
much as a successful engineering attack against earth- 
works, as it was when considered as the culmination 
of a well planned campaign. The place was in fact 
taken a good ways away from it. Grierson's wide de- 
struction of the railroads and bridges, and the far 
wider fright which he spread among the rebels, were 
part of the fatal preliminaries which were the most 
decisive parts of the attack. Such were also the se- 
ries of battles which so relentlessly pounded Pember- 
ton backwards into the trap where he was finally 
caged ; particularly the expulsion of the rebel forces 



THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN. 141 

from Jackson, just before the siege. All these opera- 
tions gradually fixed Pemberton where he could not 
get out, and where his friends could not help him out ; 
and so he waited until he had no more provisions, and 
then gave up. There seems no reason for believing 
that the assault which Grant had arranged to give on 
the 6th, if the surrender had not been made on the 
4th, would have been more successful than either of 
the previous assaults; the earthworks of Vicksburg 
were skillfully and strongly built, and were much the 
stronger because they stood on ground itself naturally 
very strong. The great feature of the transaction was 
therefore the broad and far-seeing wisdom of a gene- 
ral who can organize campaigns, rather than the mere 
ability of a colonel to make a furious assault at the 
head of his regiment, That this was the nature of 
the campaign, appears from the history of the pre- 
liminary part of it; and so it does, from Grant's 
own dispatch to Sherman, on hearing that Johnston 
was doing his best to- get together an army to relieve 
the place. "They seem, 11 wrote Grant, "to put a 
great deal of faith in the Lord and Joe Johnston, 
but you must whip Johnston at least fifteen miles from 
here. 11 That battle never happened. 

It is said that during the dreary days of the siege 
of Vicksburg, a knot of men collected in a druggist's 
shop in Cincinnati, were discussing the probabilities 
of his success in taking Vicksburg. An aged coun- 
tryman, who had been a silent listener, was at last ap- 
pealed to for his opinion. 

"I rather think he'll do it, 11 said the stranger, in a 
tone of certainty. 
10 



142 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

"What makes you think so?" said the company. 

"Well, I don't know; but our Ulysses always did 
do whatever he said he would. You see Ulysses is 
my boy," added the old man; and the event justified 
his confidence.- 

Never was an enterprise hedged in with difficulties 
more gigantic; but against these Grant placed the 
silent, inflexible force of a will which no length of 
time could weary, no obstacles discourage, and the 
combinations of a brain which seemed equally capable 
of attending to the vastest plans and the most trivial 
minutiae. 

We can all remember that thrill of joy and thank- 
fulness which vibrated through the country when the 
telegraph flashed through it the news of this victory. 
It was a double triumph for the nation. Not only 
was Vicksburg taken, but the General and commander 
that the nation had long been looking for was at last 
made manifest. 

In vain did envy and jealousy, at this point intrigue 
against him, and endeavor to fill the ear of the Presi- 
dent with suspicions. "I assure you he is a hard 
drinker," said one of these detractors. The "slow, 
wise smile " that we so well remember, rose over that 
rugged face as Lincoln made answer : 

"I wish you would tell me exactly ivhat he drinks. 
I should like to send some of the same brand to all 
my other Generals." 

No ; there was no deceiving Lincoln. He knew a 
man when he saw him, and was ready to put all power 
in. hands that he saw were strong enough to use it. 



HOW GRANT MADE A SPEECH. 143 

General Grant's commission as major-general in the 
regular army was dated July 4, 1863, the day of the 
occupation of Vieksburg. In the succeeding October 
he was placed in command of the great "Military Di- 
vision of the Mississippi," consisting of the three " De- 
partments" of the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the 
Tennessee, and including the command of four strong 
armies; his own, Hooker's, and those of the Cumber- 
land and the Ohio. 

Grant's next victory was that of Chattanooga, Nov. 
25, 1863, which substantially repaired the ill effects of 
the defeat of Rosecrans at Chickamauga, and assured the 
possession of the mountain citadel from which in the 
next spring Sherman sallied on his way to Atlanta. 

A very thorough effort to extract a speech from 
Grant was made at St. Louis, January 29, 1864, after 
the victory of Chattanooga. There was a public din- 
ner in his honor. When the regular toast to "our 
distinguished guest" was offered and drank, and the 
band had capped the compliment with "Hail to the 
Chief," the guest would, on political principles have 
talked for at least half an hour. Grant got up and 
said: "Gentlemen — in response it will be impossible 
for me to do more than to thank you." In the eve- 
ning there was a serenade, and a great crowd to hear 
it. When Grant came out on the balcony, everybody 
shouted " Speech, speech ! " and then was the time for 
another able political manifesto, say of an hour long. 
The General took pff his hat. Everybody was per- 
fectly still. At last a speech from the Silent General ! 
But that commander had now "found a can't in his 
dictionary." "Gentlemen," he said, "I thank you for 



144 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

this honor. I cannot make a speech. It is something 
I have never done, and never intend to do, and I beg 
you will excuse me." So he put on his hat, took out 
a cigar, lit it, smoked, and looked at the rockets. The 
crowd kept bawling out, "Speech, speech, speech!" 
A foolish local politician who had been let into the 
balcony, offered the General a piece of worn-out clap- 
trap to fling to the crowd. "Tell them," said he, 
"that you can fight for them, but can't talk to them." 
The General quietly intimated that he should leave 
such things for others to say. Still they bawled 
•'Speech! " and once more the "very obstinate man," 
taking his cigar from his lips, leaned over the railing 
and puffed forth the smoke as if to speak. "Now, 
then," said the excited crowd, and they were all still. 
"Gentlemen," said Grant, "making speeches is not 
my business. I never did it in my life, and I never 
will. I thank you, however, for your attendance 
here." 

On March 10th, 1864, Grant was appointed Lieu- 
tenant General, and placed in command of all the ar- 
mies of the United States. . The first law passed at 
that winter's session had been a joint resolution thank- 
ing Grant and the officers and men that had fought 
under him, and providing for an honorary medal to 
be presented to him by the United States, in testimo- 
ny thereof. 

The Union armies, as Grant himself had already 
remarked, in his dry way, had hitherto " acted inde- 
pendently, and without concert, like a baulky team, 
no two pulling together." 



THE RICHMOND CAMPAIGN. 145 

Henceforward, in his single strong hand, those ar- 
mies worked together. The rebel leaders could no 
longer beat a Union army at one end of the line of 
hostilities by massing all their troops upon it, and then 
whirl them away to the other end and beat another. 
As Grant was engaged in crossing the Rapidan at the 
opening of the final Richmond campaign, he sat down 
on a log by the roadside and wrote a few words which 
were telegraphed from Washington. They let Sher- 
man loose to co-operate in the South with the Army 
of the Potomac in the north — and the Rebellion was 
ground to dust between the two. 

In this final movement, the first act was the battle 
of the Wilderness. There is a story that upon the 
next morning after the first day's struggling in those 
tangled and all but impassable woods, Lee and his of- 
ficers came out as aforetime, to see the Union forces 
going back again over the river ; and that when he saw, 
instead, signs of their resuming the attack, he remarked 
to his companions, " They have a general now. It is 
all up with us!" The story may not be true ; but its 
facts were. It was after six days of battle that Grant 
sent to Washington the dispatch which ended with the 
grim remark, " I propose to fight it out on this line if 
it takes all summer." Spottsylvania followed, and 
Cold Harbor ; the investment of Petersburg, and that 
long series of assaults, forays, entrenchments and bat- 
tles which ended with the surrender of Lee and the 
explosion of the Rebellion. 

In the early days of the campaign, Mrs. Grant gave 
an opinion about Richmond, which was as well found- 
ed as that of the General's father about Vicksburg. 



146 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

Somebody was so good as to express to her a hope 
that her husband would take Richmond. Mrs. Grant 
observed, with a dry simplicity of phrase that sounded 
as if she had gone to school to her husband as well as 
married him ; " Well, I don't know. I think he may. 
Mr. Grant always was a very obstinate man ! " 

From the time of Grant's first appointment, he has 
gone on steadily, firmly, and without bluster or parade, 
doing the impossible, and demonstrating his early say- 
ing, that there was no can't in his dictionary. In 
quiet reticence and persevering patience he resembles 
the Duke of Wellington more than any of the great 
military leaders. Like Wellington and George Wash- 
ington, he seems possessed of a buoyancy of capacity 
which always and steadily rises to the height of any 
emergency. 

How modestly and quietly he received promotion ; 
how earnestly and wisely he set to work, when all the 
reins of power were in his hands, to organize that last 
splendid campaign that issued in the taking of Rich- 
mond and the surrender of Lee, the people do not 
need to be told. It will be had in everlasting remem- 
brance. 

Never had man more efficient Generals to second 
him. Grant's marshals were not inferior to Napoleon's, 
and the unenvying, patriotic ability with which he and 
they worked together is not the least noticeable feat- 
ure in the campaign whose glory they share with him. 

The war closed leaving General Grant, who en- 
tered it an obscure trader, in a position perhaps as 
noticeable and brilliant as any in the civilized world. 
He stands in the front rank among the leaders of hu- 



HIS HONESTY. 147 

man society, and in our American affairs, still critical, 
he shows a judgment, and a prudence, and a temper- 
ate wisdom which seem to point him out as no less 
fit to rule in peace than in war. 

General Grant has many qualities which fit him to 
be a ruler of men, Among them are some plain and 
common-place virtues. Such is his unflinching adher- 
ence to what he thinks is right. Such is his uncon- 
ditional public and private honesty. This was well 
exemplified in the solicitous care with which he kept 
the cotton business outside of his command in the 
West, as long as possible, from a well founded dis- 
like of its immense corrupting power. 

When at last he had to consent to allow the prog- 
ress of trade into the territory taken from the rebels, 
he specified that, at least, it should be kept in the 
hands of honest and trusty and undoubted Unionists. 
He was then asked to name such men. He replied, 
" I will do no such thing. If I did, it would appear 
in less than a week that I was a partner of every one 
of the persons trading under my authority." 

Such another virtue is, that scrupulous official econ- 
omy by which General Grant has already saved our 
over-taxed country five million dollars a year, by cut- 
ting down expenses in the War Department. 

He also possesses other very noticeable qualifications 
of a more special sort, and so much rarer among pub- 
lic men, that they must be named even in the shortest 
inventory of General Grant's character. Two of these 
are, the broadest and most generous justice in attribut- 
ing the credit of doing well where it belongs, and 
remarkable wisdom in judging and selecting men. Of 



148 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

the former quality, his letter to Sherman at the time 
of his appointment as Lieutenant- General is a good in- 
stance. That letter, exceedingly honorable evidence 
of simplicity and justice in the writer, and of merit in 
the recipient, was as follows : 

"Dear Sherman: — The bill reviving the grade of 
Lieutenant-General in the army has become a law, and 
my name has been sent to the Senate for the place. 
I now receive orders to report to Washington immedi- 
ately in person, which indicates a confirmation, or a 
likelihood of confirmation. 

I start in the morning to comply with the order. 

Whilst I have been eminently successful in this war, 
in at least gaining the confidence of the public, no one 
feels more than I how much of this success is due to 
the energy and skill, and the harmonious putting forth 
of that energy and skill, of those whom it has been my 
good fortune to have occupying subordinate positions 
under me. 

There are many officers to whom these remarks are 
applicable to a greater or less degree, proportionate 
to their ability as soldiers ; but what I want is to ex- 
press my thanks to you and McPherson, as the men to 
whom, above all others, I feel indebted for whatever 
I have had of success. 

How far your advice and assistance have been of 
help to me you know. How far your execution of 
whatever has been given you to do entitles you to the 
reward I am receiving, you cannot know as well as I. 

I feel all the gratitude this letter would express, 
giving it the most flattering construction. 



POWER OF HOLDING HIS TONGUE. 149 

The word you I use in the plural, intending it for 
McPherson also. I should write to him, and will some 
day ; but, starting in the morning, I do not know that 
I will find time just now. 

Your friend, 

U. S. Grant, Major-General." 

Of his wisdom in selecting and trusting assistants 
and subordinates, the list of their names is a very suf- 
ficient evidence. The proved possession of this one 
faculty goes very far to prove that its possessor is com- 
petent to govern ; and when a strong will and stain- 
less public and private morals are added, the presump- 
tion grows very. much stronger. 

A gigantic power of minding his own business and 
holding his tongue is even a greater wonder in Gene- 
ral Grant than his being honest and just. An instance 
of his successful resistance to the most violent pump- 
ing of him for a speech, has been given ; and other 
such brilliant "flashes of silence," as Sydney Smith 
would have called them, illuminate his whole career 
during and since the war. He has been recently sub- 
jected to a very similar and more vexatious series of 
similar endeavors by the politicians who have been 
buzzing about him as he has become more and more 
plainly needed as next President. These noxious 
creatures have tried every conceivable trick to make 
him say something to show him a member of their 
party — for mere patriotism and uprightness will not 
serve these bigoted sectarians. 

Thus far the silent soldier has defied them all. In 
January, 1864, somebody said something to him about 



150 ULYSSES S. GRANT. 

the Presidency. He put the subject by, saying, "Let 
us first settle the war, and it will be time enough then 
to talk upon that subject." A little while afterwards 
some one referred to a certain resolute effort to make 
him talked of as a candidate, and he then laid down 
his famous Side-walk Platform : "When this war is 
over," said he, "I intend to run for mayor of Galena, 
and if elected I intend to have the sidewalk fixed up 
between my house and the depot." Properly under- 
stood, this is a very quiet but very sarcastic valuation 
of office-seeking. 

Not long ago, Senator Wade complained to a news- 
paper reporter who immediately printed the story, 
that he "had often tried to find out whether Grant 
was for Congress or Johnson, or what the devil he was 
for, but never could get anything out of him, for as 
quick as he'd talk politics Grant would talk horse, and 
he could talk horse by the hour." This was a horrible 
irritation to the old politician, who could not be con- 
tent to judge the man by his acts. This was a great 
error. One would imagine that of all men a veteran 
politician would have been first to recognize the utter 
emptiness of words and professions. If Gen. Grant's 
views are not consistent with the unbroken record of 
his whole life of action, he is the most gigantic hypo- 
crite the world ever saw, and in that event it is cer- 
tainly useless to try to make him expose himself now. 
If his views are in harmony with his acts, it is assured- 
ly useless to state them, and as a respectable citizen 
and a man of dignified self-respect, he may justly be 
offended at such superfluous attempts to coax him to 
make affidavits to his own character. 



QUALIFICATIONS AS A RULER. 151 

A Texas political editor, in November, 1867, while 
Gen. Grant was acting Secretary of War, pushed his 
way into the General's private office, and "had an in- 
terview " with him. He went right to work with his 
feelers, as is the method of this species of insect, and 
told Grant that "the people of his section wanted the 
General for President." Grant turned the subject. 
The editor, being one of that sort of "gentlemen" 
who see no connection between politics and politeness, 
turned the subject promptly back again, saying, 
" General, we want to run you for President, and I want 
to know what I can say when I return home." Grant 
answered with peremptory decision, " Say nothing, sir ; 
I want nothing said." 

No other but a man of his peculiar character and 
power could have borne the ordeal of forming a part 
of the President's suite in his late unpopular progress 
through the Northern States. The discretion, delicacy 
and wisdom with which he sustained himself, show a 
character capable of the most skillful adaptations. 
We are indebted to his wise presence and temperate 
advice in averting the threatened danger of civil war 
in Maryland: for, like all wise and great Generals, 
Grant is duly impressed with the horrors of war, and 
will be always for every possible means of averting 
such an evil. 

In all these respects Grant has shown a wise states- 
manship, which points him out to the country as the 
fittest one to replace to it what was lost in the sudden 
death of Lincoln. Should an appeal be made to the 
people, we think there is no name that would meet a 
more overwhelming and enthusiastic response. 



CHAPTER ILT. 

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Mr. Garrison's Birth and Parents — His Mother — Her Conversion — His Boyhood 
— Apprenticed to a Printer — First Anti-Slavery Address — Advice to Dr, 
Beecher — Benjamin Lundy — Garrison goes to Baltimore — first Battle with 
Slavery — In Jail — First number of the Liberator- — Threats and Rage from the 
South — The American Anti-Slavery Society — First Visit to England — The 
Era of Mob Violence — The Respectable Boston Mob — Mr. Garrison's account 
— Again in Jail — The Massachusetts Legislature Uncivil to the Abolitionists — 
Logical Vigor of the Slaveholders — Garrison's Disunionism — Denounces the 
Church — Liberality of the Liberator — The Southerners' own Testimony — Mr. 
Garrison's Bland Manners — His Steady Nerves— His use of Language— Things 
by their Right Names — Abolitionist " Hard Language ;" Garrison's Argument 
on it — Protest for Woman's Rights — The triumph of his Cause — " The Liber- 
ator " Discontinued^— Second Visit to England — Letter to Mrs: Stowe. 

We have written the name of a man who has had 
a more marked influence on our late national history 
than any other person who could be mentioned. No 
man has been more positively active in bringing on 
that great moral and political agitation whose issues 
have been in those recent scenes and events which 
no American can ever forget. 

When we remember that it was begun by one man, 
singlehanded, alone, unfriended, despised and poor, we 
must feel in advance that such a man came of no com- 
mon stock, and possessed no common elements of char- 
acter. We are interested to inquire after the parent- 
age and the early forming causes which have produced 
such results. In Mr. Garrison's case he frankly as- 
cribes all that he is, or has ever been or done, to the 
training, example and influence of a mother whose 

154 




P^-J/cyd £> 



a/r^r-i^rfjrH. 



garrison's mother. 155 

early history and life-long character were of uncom- 
mon interest. 

She was born of English stock, in the province of 
New Brunswick, and grew up in that lethargic state of 
society which has received not an impulse or a new 
idea since the time of Queen Anne. Her parents at- 
tended the Established Church, drank the king's health 
on all proper occasions, and observed the gradual 
growing up of a beautiful and spirited daughter with 
tranquil satisfaction. 

At the age of eighteen this young girl, with a party 
of gay companions, went from curiosity to attend the 
religious services of some itinerating Baptists, who 
were startling the dead echoes of that region by a 
style of preaching, praying and exhorting, such as 
never had been heard there before. They were com- 
monly called Ranters, and the young people promised 
themselves no small amusement from the spectacle of 
their extravagances. 

But the beautiful and gay girl carried unknown and 
dormant in her own nature, the elements of an earnest 
and lofty religious character, which no touch of the 
droning services of a dead church had ever yet stirred 
to consciousness — and the wild singing, the fervent ex- 
hortations, the vivid and real emotions which were ex- 
hibited in this meeting, fired the electric train and 
roused the fervor of her own nature. Life, death, 
eternity, all became vivid and real to her, and the 
command to come out from a vain world and be sep- 
arate ; to confess Christ openly before men, seemed to 
her to have a living and present power. 



156 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

It is very commonly the case that minds for the first 
time awakened to the real power of religion, feel that 
the only true faith is to be found under the forms and 
ideas which have so moved them, and that to confess 
Christ means a visible union with any particular body 
of Christians who have made real to them the Christian 
idea. Such was the call felt by this young girl to join 
herself with this despised body ot Christians. 

Her parents were greatly shocked and annoyed 
when they found that instead of ridiculing the Ranters, 
she was going again and again to their services, with 
an undissembled earnestness: and when finally she 
announced to them her purpose to unite herself to 
them in the public ordinance of baptism, their indig- 
nation knew no bounds, and they threatened her that 
if she did she should never enter their doors again, or 
be to them more than a stranger. 

Then was the crisis in which the woman stood be- 
tween two worlds — two kinds of life — on one side, the 
most earnest and whole-hearted excitement of the 
higher moral feelings, on the other side, the material 
good things of this world 

The mother of Lloyd Garrison hesitated not a mo- 
ment between the convictions of her conscience and a 
worldly good. Like the primitive Christians, she 
went down into the waters of baptism feeling that she 
was leaving father, mother, and home, and casting 
herself on God alone. 

Her parents, with true John Bull obstinacy, made 
good their word, and shut their doors upon her ; but 
an uncle, struck perhaps with her courage and con- 
stancy, opened to her an asylum where she remained 



HIS BOYHOOD. 15 V 

till her marriage. In later years her parents became 
reconciled to her. 

The religious life thus begun was carried on with 
a marked and triumphant fullness. She was a woman 
of enthusiastic convictions, of strong mind, and of 
great natural eloquence, and during the infancy and 
childhood of William Lloyd he was often with her in 
the prayer-meetings, which were vivified by the elec- 
tric eloquence of her prayers and exhortations — for 
the Baptist as well as Methodist denominations, al- 
lowed to women as well as men, a Christian equality 
in the use of the gifts of instruction. 

The father of Garrison, a man possessed of some 
genius and many fascinating and. interesting traits, was 
one of the victims of intemperance in those days when 
so many families were saddened by its blight ; and at 
quite an early age Mrs. Garrison was left with a family 
of helpless little ones, with no other heritage but her 
faith in God, and her own undaunted and courageous 
spirit. She was obliged to put her boys out at a very 
tender age, to struggle for themselves, while she fol- 
lowed the laborious profession of a sick nurse. 

William Lloyd, her second son, was by tempera- 
ment fitted to be impressed by a woman like his moth- 
er. He had listened to the burning recital of her ex- 
perience, and his heart, even in early infancy, learned 
to thrill in sympathy with the solemn grandeur of re- 
ligious devotion and absolute self-sacrifice. All his 
mother's religious ideas became his own ; and even as 
a boy he was a strict and well versed Baptist, having 
at his tongue's end every argument which supported 



158 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

the peculiar faith which his mother's enthusiasm had 
taught him to regard as the only true one. 

The necessities of life, however, early separated him 
from her society. When only nine years of age he was 
placed in the shop of a shoe-maker to learn the trade, 
but the confinement and employment were unfavora- 
ble to his health and uncongenial to his feelings. He 
was longing for educational advantages, and bent on 
a career in the world of ideas. 

He was taken from this situation and sent to school 
at Newburyport, paying for his board and schooling 
by sawing wood, doing errands, and performing other 
labors out of school hours. 

After some unsuccessful experiments at different sit- 
uations, he found at last a congenial sphere in being 
apprenticed as a printer to Ephraim W. Allen, editor 
of the Newburyport Gazette. 

His bent had always been for letters, and he engaged 
in this occupation with enthusiasm, and that minute and 
careful faithfulness and accuracy in regard to the 
smallest minutiae which formed a very marked trait in 
his character. In all that relates to the expression of 
ideas by the written or printed signs of language, Gar- 
rison had a natural aptitude, and attained to a pecu- 
liar perfection. 

His handwriting was, and is, even at this time of 
life, as perfect in point of legibility, neatness, and ex- 
act finish, as if he had been by profession a writing- 
master. 

Even in the days when the Liberator was the most 
despised and rejected of all papers, the very lowest in 
the scale of genteel appreciation, its clear and elegant 



FIRST LITERARY EFFORTS. 159 

typography, and the grace and completeness of its me- 
chanical disposition, won for it admiration. He un- 
derstood to a nicety that art which solicits the eye of 
a reader, and makes a printed sheet look attractive. 

It was not long before his fervid mind began to 
reach beyond the mechanical setting of his types, to 
the intellectual and moral purposes to be accomplished 
through them. 

Garrison was one of the ordained priests of nature, 
one of the order of natural prophets who feel them- 
selves to have a message to society, which they must 
and will deliver. 

He began sending anonymous articles to the paper 
on which he was employed, which were well received, 
and which, consequently, he had more than once the 
pleasure of setting up in type. 

Encouraged by their, favorable reception, he gradu- 
ally began to offer articles to other journals. A series 
of articles for the Salem Gazette, under the signature 
"Aristides," attracted particular attention, and were 
commended by Robert Walsh in the Philadelphia 
National Gazette, who attributed them to Timothy 
Pickering ; a compliment of no small significance to a 
young mechanic. 

In 1824, his employer, Mr. Allen, was obliged for a 
long time to be absent from the charge of his paper, 
when Mr. Garrison acted as editor of the Newburyport 
Herald, of which he had been previously printer. 

In 1826 he became proprietor and editor of a paper 
called the Free Press, in his native town. He toiled 
at it with unceasing industry, and that patient cheer- 
fulness of enthusiasm which made every labor light. 



160 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

He printed his own editorials, without previously writ- 
ing them, a fact which more than anything else shows 
how completely he had mastered the mechanical part 
of his profession. But with all this industry and tal- 
ent, the work of keeping up a newspaper of so high 
a moral tone as that to which he was always aspir- 
ing, was simply beyond the ability of a poor man, 
and he was obliged to relinquish it. He went to Bos- 
ton and engaged as a journeyman printer for a time, 
till in 1827 he became the editor of the National Phi- 
lanthropist, the first journal that advocated total ab- 
stinence, and in 1828 he joined a friend at Benning- 
ton, Vt, in a journal devoted to peace, temperance, 
and anti-slavery. 

On the 4th of July, 1829, he delivered an address 
in Park Street church, Boston, on the subject of slav- 
ery. At that time the subject had taken a deep and 
absorbing hold upon his mind. He then regarded the 
American Colonization Society's as the most practical 
and feasible issue in the case — an opinion which he 
afterwards most fully retracted. At this time he vis- 
ited the leading orthodox ministers and editors in and 
about Boston. Being himself a child of the church, 
he desired to stir up in behalf of the slave that effi- 
ciency of church activity that was effecting so much 
in the cause of temperance. Burning with zeal, he 
sought the then active leader of the orthodox party, 
and begged him to become leader in the movement, 
and command the forces in a general anti-slavery cru- 
sade. 

Dr. Beecher received him favorably, listened to him 
courteously, wished him success, but said in regard to 



BENJAMIN LUNDY. 161 

himself he had so "many irons in the fire" that he 
could not think of putting in another. "Then," said 
Garrison, "you had better let all others go, and attend 
to this one alone." The results of time have shown 
that the young printer saw further than the sages of 
his day. 

It is worth remembering by those who criticized 
Garrison's generalship in leading the anti-slavery cause, 
that in the outset he was not in the least ambitious of 
being a general, and would willingly have become 
aide-de-camp to the ruling forces of the religious world. 
That the campaign was carried on out of the church 
of New England, and not in and by it, was because 
the church and the religious world at that hour were 
absorbed in old issues — old activities and schemes of 
benevolence — and had not grace given them to see 
that the great critical national question of the day had 
thus been passed out of their hands. 

The articles in Garrison's paper, however, attracted 
the attention of a little obscure old man, a Quaker, 
who was laboring in the city of Baltimore, for the 
cause of the suffering slaves, with a devotion and self- 
sacrifice worthy of the primitive Christians. 

Benjamin Lundy, a quiet, persistent, drab-clothed, 
meek old man, one of those valiant little mice who 
nibble undismayed on the nets which enchain the 
strongest lions, was keeping up, in the city of Balti- 
more, an anti-slavery paper which was read only by a 
few people who thought just as he did, and which was 
tolerated in southern society only because everybody 
was good-naturedly sure that it was no sort of matter 
what it said. 



162 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

Benjamin, however, took his staff in hand, and 
journeyed on foot up to Bennington, Vt., to see the 
man who wrote as if he cared for the slave. The 
strict Baptist and the meek Quaker met on the com- 
mon ground of the cross of Christ. Both were agreed 
in one thing ; that here was Jesus Christ, in the person 
of a persecuted race, hungry, thirsty, sick and in pris- 
on, with none to visit and relieve ; and the only ques- 
tion was, would they arise and go to His help ? 

So Mr. Garrison went down to the city of Baltimore, 
to join his forces with Benjamin Lundy. "But," as 
he humorously observed, "I wasn't much help to him, 
for he had been all for gradual emancipation, and as 
soon as I began to look into the matter, I became con- 
vinced that immediate abolition was the doctrine to 
be preached, and I scattered his subscribers like pig- 
eons." 

Good little Benjamin took the ruinous zeal of 
his new partner with the tolerance which his sect ex- 
tends to every brother who "follows his light ; " but a 
final assault of Garrison on one of the most villainous 
aspects of slavery, quite upset the enterprise, and 
landed him in prison. The story is in this wise : A 
certain ship, the Francis Todd, from Newburyport, came 
to Baltimore and took in a load of slaves for the New 
Orleans market. All the harrowing cruelties and sep- 
arations which attend the rending asunder of families, 
and the sale of slaves, were enacted under the eyes of 
the youthful philanthropist, and in a burning article he 
denounced the inter-state slave trade as piracy, and pi- 
racy of an aggravated and cruel kind, inasmuch as those 
born and educated in civilized and Christianized society, 



FIRST BATTLE WITH SLAVERY. 163 

have more sensibility to feel the evils thus inflicted, 
than imbruted savages. He denounced the owners 
of the ship, and all the parties in no measured terms, 
and expressed his determination to "cover with thick 
infamy all who were engaged in the transaction." 
Then, to be sure, the sleeping tiger was roused, for 
there was a vigor and power in the young editor's elo- 
quence that quite dissipated the good-natured con- 
tempt which had hitherto hung round the paper. He 
was indicted for libel, found guilty, of course, con- 
demned, imprisoned in the cell of a man who had 
been hanged for murder. His mother at this time was 
not living, but her heroic, undaunted spirit still sur- 
vived in her son, who took the baptism of persecution 
and obloquy not merely with patience, but with the 
joy which strong spirits feel in endurance. He wrote 
sonnets on the walls of his prison, and by his cheerful 
and engaging manners made friends of his jailor and 
family, who did everything to render his situation as 
comfortable as possible. Some considerable effort was 
made for his release, and much interest was excited in 
various quarters for him 

He was finally liberated by Arthur Tappan, who 
paid the exorbitant fine for want of which he was 
imprisoned. He went out of jail, as people generally 
do who are imprisoned for conscience's sake, more de- 
voted than ever to the cause for which he suffered. 
The river of his life, which hitherto had had many 
branches, all flowing in the direction of general benev- 
olence, now narrowed and concentrated itself into one 
intense volume, to beat day and night against the prison 



164 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

walls of slavery, till its foundations should be washed 
away, and it should tumble to dust. 

He issued a prospectus of an anti-slavery journal at 
Washington, and lectured through the northern cities, 
and was surprised to find the many and vital cords by 
which the Northern States were held from the expres- 
sion of the natural feelings 'of humanity on a subject 
whose claims were so obvious. In Boston he in vain 
tried to get the use of a hall to lecture in ; but a mob 
was threatened, and of all the public edifices in the 
city, not one could be found whose owner would risk 
it until a club of professed infidels came forward, and 
offered their hall as a tribute to free speech. 

On Jan. 1, 1831, Mr. Garrison issued the first num- 
ber of the Liberator. He had no money. The rank, 
respectability and religion of Boston alike disowned 
him. At first, he and his partner, Isaac Knapp, were 
too poor even to hire an office of their own, but the 
foreman in the office of the Christian Examiner gen- 
erously employed them as journeymen, taking their 
labor as compensation for the use of his type. Mr. 
Garrison, after working as journeyman printer all day, 
spent the greater part of the night in writing and 
printing his paper ; and under such auspices the first 
number came out. 

Nothing more remarkable in human literature has 
ever appeared than those few memorable paragraphs in 
which this obscure, unfriended young mechanic thus 
issued his declaration of war against an evil embodied 
in the Constitution and protected by the laws of one 
of the most powerful nations of the earth. David 
meeting Goliath with a sling and stone was nothing to 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LIBERATOR. 165 

it. The words have a prophetic assurance that sounds 
solemn in the remembrance of recent events. He 
speaks as one having authority : 

"During my recent tour for the purpose of exciting 
the minds of the people by a series of discourses on 
the subject of slavery, every place that I visited gave 
fresh evidence of the fact that a greater revolution in 
public sentiment was to be effected in the free States 
— and particularly in New England — than at the South. 
I found contempt more bitter, opposition more active, 
detraction more relentless, prejudice mo^e stubborn, 
and apathy more frozen than among slaveholders 
themselves. Of course there were individual excep- 
tions to the contrary. This state of things afflicted, 
but did not dishearten me. I determined, at every 
hazard, to lift up the standard of emancipation in the 
eyes of the nation, within sight of Bunker Hill, and 
in the birth-place of liberty. That standard is now 
unfurled ; and long may it float, unhurt by the spolia- 
tions of time or the missiles of a desperate foe ; yea, 
till every chain be broken, and every bondman set 
free ! Let Southern oppressors tremble ; let their se- 
cret abettors tremble ; let all the enemies of the per- 
secuted black tremble. Assenting to the self-evident 
truths maintained in the American Declaration of In- 
dependence, 'that all men are created equal, and en- 
dowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, 
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness,' I shall strenuously contend for the immediate 
enfranchisement of our slave population. 

****** 



166 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

"I am aware that many object to the severity of 
my language ; but is there not cause for severity ? I 
will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or 
speak, or write with moderation. No ! No ! Tell a 
man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm ; 
tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands 
of the ravisher ; tell the mother to gradually extricate 
her babe from the fire into which it has fallen ; but 
urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the 
present ! I am in earnest. I will not equivocate — I 
will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch. And 
I will be heard. The apathy of the people is 
enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, 
and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. 

It is pretended that I am retarding the cause of 
emancipation by the coarseness of my invective, and 
the precipitancy of my measures. The charge is not 
true. On this question, my influence, humble as it is, 
is felt at this moment to a considerable extent ; and it 
shall be felt in coming years — not perniciously, but 
beneficially — not as a curse, but as a blessing ; and pos- 
terity WILL BEAR TESTIMONY THAT I WAS RIGHT. I de- 
sire to thank God that He enables me to disregard ' the 
fear of man which bringeth a snare,' and to speak 
truth in its simplicity and power ; and I here close 
with this dedication : 

Vr w Vr 7T vr 7T 

" Oppression ! I have seen thee, face to face, 
And met thy cruel eye and cloudy brow ; 
But thy soul-withering glance I fear not now — 
For dread to prouder feelings doth give place, 
Of deep abhorrence ! Scorning the disgrace 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LIBERATOR. 167 

Of slavish knees that at thy footstool bow, 

I also kneel — but with far other vow 

Do hail thee and thy herd of hirelings base ; 

I swear, while life-blood warms my throbbing veins, 

Still to oppose and thwart, with heart and hand, 

Thy brutalizing sway — till Afiic's chains 

Are burst, and Freedom rules the rescued land, 

Trampling Opression and his iron rod ; 

Such is the vow I take — so help me God ! " 

Just thirty-five years after, on the first of January, 
1866, Garrison had the happiness of announcing that 
the glorious work to which he had devoted himself 
was finally finished ; and with humble ascriptions of 
all the praise and glory to God, he proclaimed the 
cessation of the Liberator. His own son had been a 
leader in that conquering army which entered Charles- 
ton amid the shouts of liberated slaves, and the fet- 
ters and hand-cuffs of the slave-mart were sent as 
peaceful trophies to the Liberator office in Boston. 
Never was it given to any mortal in one generation to 
witness a more perfect triumph of a moral enterprise! 

But before this triumph came were years of sharp 
conflict. Tones so ringing and so resolute, coming 
from the poorest den in Boston, could not but find lis- 
teners ! The vital instincts of all forms of oppression 
are surprisingly acute, and prompt to discriminate afar 
what is really a true and what a false alarm. A storm 
of agitation began, which swelled, and eddied, and 
howled, and shook, and convulsed the nation from 
year to year, till the end came. 

The first number of the Liberator brought fifty dol- 
lars from James Forten, a colored man of Philadelphia, 
and the names of twenty-five subscribers ; and before 



168 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

long an obscure room was rented as an office, where 
Garrison and his partner made their bed on the floor, 
boarded themselves, and printed their paper. 

A Southern magistrate, trembling for the institutions 
of his country, wrote a somewhat dictatorial appeal to 
the mayor of Boston, Harrison Gray Otis, to suppress 
that paper. Mr. Otis wrote in reply, that having fer- 
reted out the paper and the editor, he found that his 
office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a 
negro boy, his supporters a few insignificant persons 
of all colors — from which he argued that there was 
no occasion for alarm, even though the obscure paper 
should prove irrepressible. Very differently, however, 
thought the South. Every mail brought to Garrison 
threats of assassination, and letters whose mingled 
profanity and obscenity can only be described as John 
Bunyan describes the discourse of Apolly on, u He spake 
as a dragon." The Governors of one or two States set 
a price upon his head. The Governor of Georgia, in 
terms somewhat more decent, offered five thousand 
dollars to any one who should arrest and bring to trial 
under the laws of that State, the editor or publisher 
of the Liberator. Many of Mr. Garrison's friends, 
deeming his life in danger, besought him to wear arms. 
He was, however, from religious conviction, a non-re- 
sistant of evil, interpreting with literal strictness the 
Saviour's directions on that subject ; and so committed 
his life simply to the good providence of God. 

On January 1, 1832, he secured the co-operation of 
eleven others, who, with himself, organized the Amer- 
ican Anti-Slavery Society upon the principle of imme- 
diate emancipation. Affiliated associations sprang up 



ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LIBERATOR. 169 

all over the country — books, tracts, lectures, all the 
machinery of moral agitation, began active movement. 
He went to England as agent for the Emancipation 
Society, to hold counsel with the men who had pion- 
eered the same work successfully in England. He 
was warmly received by Wilberfcrce, Brougham, 
Clarkson, and their associates, and succeeded in open- 
ing their eyes to the entire inefficiency of the Coloni- 
zation Society as a substitute for the great duty of 
immediate emancipation, so that Wilberforce, with 
eleven of his coadjutors, issued a protest against it, 
not as in itself considered, but as it had been made a 
shield to the consciences of those who deferred their 
immediate duty to the slave on the ground of this dis- 
tant and precarious remedy. 

While in England this time, Mr. Garrison was invit- 
ed to Stafford House, and treated with marked atten- 
tion by the Duchess of Sutherland, then in the zenith 
of that magnificent beauty which, in union with a 
generous nature and winning manners, made her one 
of the most distinguished leaders among the nobility 
of the times. With a heart to feel every grand and 
heroic impulse, she had entered with enthusiasm into 
the anti-slavery movement of her own country, and 
was prepared to welcome the obscure, unknown apos- 
tle of the same faith from American shores. At her 
request, Garrison sat for Ms portrait to one of the 
most distinguished artists of the time, and the copy 
was retained among the memorabilia of Stafford 
House. Garrison humorously remarked that many 
had desired to have his head before now, but the solic- 
itation had never come in so nattering a form. The 



170 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

noble woman has lived to enjoy the triumph of that 
cause in which her large heart gave her that right of 
personal possession which belongs to the very highest 
natures. 

On his return from England he assisted in organiz- 
ing the American Anti-Slavery Society in Philadelphia, 
the declaration of whose principles was prepared by 
him. From this time the anti-slavery agitation was 
intensified, and the era of mob violence swept over 
the country. The holding of an anti-slavery society 
in any place was the appointed signal for scenes of 
riotous violence. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Hall 
was burned, the negroes abused and maltreated. In 
Cincinnati, Birney's printing-press and types were 
thrown into the Ohio, and the negroes for days were 
hunted like beasts. In Alton, Lovejoy was shot while 
defending his printing-press, and Boston, notwithstand- 
ing the sepulchres of the fathers, and the shadow of 
Bunker Hill spire, had her hour of the powers of dark- 
ness. Leading presses abused the abolitionists in 
terms which aroused every vindictive passion of the 
mob, and in October, 1835, a meeting of the Female 
Anti-Slavery Society of Boston was riotously broken 
up by a collection of persons, described in the jour- 
nals of the day as "gentlemen of property and stand- 
ing." 

The heroines of that memorable day and time, were 
ladies from the very first Massachusetts families ; sprung 
from the old heroic stock of her historic fame. For 
vigor of mind, for education, for beauty, accomplish- 
ments and genius, some of them might be cited who 
would scarce find superiors in any land. Their meet- 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 171 

ing was in every way feminine and proper, and in 
strict accordance with the spirit and customs of New 
England, which recognize female organizations for va- 
rious benevolent purposes, as one of the most approved 
means for carrying on society. 

There was no more reason why a female Anti-Sla- 
very Society should not meet quietly, transact its own 
business and listen to speeches of its own chosen ora- 
tors, than the Female Foreign Missionary Society or 
the Female Home Missionary Society, or the Female 
Temperance Union. 

But certain newspapers of Boston called attention 
to the fact that this meeting was so to be held, in arti- 
cles written in that well known style which stirs up 
and invites that very mobocratic spirit which it pre- 
tends to deprecate. 

These papers proceeded to say that those ladies were 
about to hold a dangerous kind of meeting, which 
would be sure to end in a mob, that they were about 
to be addressed by George Thompson, who was de- 
clared to be nothing more nor less than a British agi- 
tator, sent over to make dissension and trouble in 
America, and kept here for that purpose by British 
funds. 

It was now stated in the public prints that several 
store keepers in the immediate vicinity of the Hall, 
had petitioned the Mayor to suppress the meeting, as in 
case of a riot in the neighborhood their property 
might be in danger. A placard was posted and cir- 
culated through the city to the following purport, that 

' The infamous foreign scoundrel, Thompson, would 
hold forth in Anti-Slavery Hall in the afternoon, and 



172 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

that the present was a fair opportunity for the friends 
of the Union 'to snake him out ;' that a purse of $100 
has been subscribed by a number of patriotic citizens 
to reward the individual who would lay violent hands 
on him, so that he might be brought to the tar kettle 
before dark." 

In consequence, the Mayor sent a deputy to Mr. 
Garrison to know if Mr. Thompson did intend to ad- 
dress the meeting, for if he did not he wished to ap- 
prise the people of it in order to tranquilize the ex- 
citement, and if he did, it would be necessary to 
double the constabulary forces. 

Mr. Garrison sent him word that Mr. Thompson was 
out of town, and would not be present at the meeting. 
The remainder of this scene is best given in Mr. Gar- 
rison's own words: 

" As the meeting was to commence at 3 o'clock, 
P. M., I went to the hall about twenty minutes before 
that time. Perhaps a hundred individuals had already 
gathered around the street door and opposite to the 
building, and their number was rapidly augmenting. 
On ascending into the hall, I found about fifteen or 
twenty ladies assembled, sitting with serene counte- 
nances, and a crowd of noisy intruders (mostly young 
men) gazing upon them, through whom I urged my 
way with considerable difficulty. 'That's Garrison,' 
was the exclamation of some of their number, as I 
quietly took my seat. Perceiving that they had no in- 
tention of retiring, I went to them and calmly said — 
' Gentlemen, perhaps you are not aware that this is a 
meeting of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, 
called and intended exclusively for ladies, and those 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 173 

only who have been invited to address them. Under- 
standing this, fact, you will not be so rude or indeco- 
rous as to thrust your presence upon this meeting. If, 
gentlemen J I pleasantly continued, 'any of you are 
ladies — in disguise — why, only apprise me of the fact, 
give me your names, and I will introduce you to the 
rest of your sex, and you can take seats among them 
accordingly.' I then sat down, and, for a few mo- 
ments, their conduct was more orderly. However, the 
stair- way and upper door of the hall were soon dense- 
ly filled with a brazen-faced crew, whose behavior 
grew more and more indecent and outrageous. Perceiv- 
ing that it would be impracticable for me, or any other 
person, to address the ladies ; and believing, as I was 
the only male abolitionist in the hall, that my presence 
would serve as a pretext for the mob to annoy the 
meeting, I held a short colloquy with the excellent 
President of the Society, telling her that I would with- 
draw, unless she particularly desired me to stay. It 
was her earnest wish that I would retire, as well for 
my own safety as for the peace of the meeting. She 
assured me that the Society would resolutely but calm- 
ly proceed to the transaction of its business, and leave 
the issue with God. I left the hall accordingly, and 
would have left the building, if the stair-case had not 
been crowded to excess. This being impracticable, I 
retired into the Anti-Slavery Office, (which is separa- 
ted from the hall by a board partition,) accompanied 
by my friend, Mr. Charles C. Burleigh. It was deemed 
prudent to lock the door, to prevent the mob from 
rushing in and destroying our publications. 



174 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

In the moan time, the crowd in the street had aug- 
mented from a hundred to thousands. The cry was 
for ' Thompson ! Thompson !' — but the Mayor had now 
arrived, and, addressing the rioters, he assured them 
that Mr. Thompson was not in the city, and besought 
them to disperse. As well might he have attempted 
to propitiate a troop of ravenous wolves. None went 
away — but the tumult continued momentarily to in- 
crease. It was apparent, therefore, that the hostility 
of the throng was not concentrated upon Mr. Thomp- 
son but that it was as deadly against the Society and 
the Anti-Slavery cause. The fact is worthy of special 
note — for it incontestably proves that the object of 
these ' respectable and influential ' rioters was to put 
down the cause of Emancipation, and that the preju- 
dice against Mr. Thompson was only a mere pretext. 

Notwithstanding the presence and frantic behavior 
of rioters in the hall, the meeting of the Society was 
regularly called to order by the President. She read 
a select and exceedingly appropriate portion of scrip- 
ture, and offered a fervent prayer to God for direction 
and succour and the forgiveness of enemies and rioters. 
It was an awful, sublime and soul-thrilling scene * 
* * The clear, untremulous tone of that Christian 
heroine in prayer, occasionally awed the ruffians into 
silence, and was heard distinctly even in the midst of 
their hisses, yells and curses — for they could not long 
silently endure the agony of conviction, and their 
conduct became furious. They now attempted to 
break down the partition, and partially succeeded ; 
but that little band of women still maintained their 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 175 

ground unshrinkingly, and endeavored to transact 
their business. 

An assault was now made upon the door of the of- 
fice, the lower panel of which was instantly dashed to 
pieces. Stooping down, and glaring upon me as I sat 
at the desk, writing an account of the riot to a distant 
friend, the ruffians cried out — ' There he is ! That's 
Garrison! Out with the scoundrel!' &c, &c. Turn- 
ing to Mr. Burleigh I said — 'You may as well open the 
door, and let them come in and do their worst.' But 
he, with great presence of mind, went out, locked the 
door, put the key into his pocket, and by his admira- 
ble firmness succeeded in keeping the office safe. 

Two or three constables having cleared the hall and 
staircase of the mob, the Mayor came in and ordered 
the ladies to desist, assuring them that he could not 
any longer guarantee protection, if they did not take 
immediate advantage of the opportunity to retire from 
the building. Accordingly, they adjourned, to meet 
at the house of one of their number, for the comple- 
tion of their business ; but as they passed through the 
crowd, they were greeted with ' taunts, hisses, and 
cheers of mobocratic triumph, from gentlemen of prop- 
erty and standing from all parts of the city.' Even 
their absence did not diminish the throng. Thomp- 
son was not there — the ladies were not there — but 
' Garrison is there ! ' was the cry. ' Garrison ! Gar- 
rison ! We must have Garrison ! Out with him ! 
Lynch him!' These and numberless other exclama- 
tions arose from the multitude. For a moment their 
attention was diverted from me to the Anti-Slavery 
sign, and they vociferously demanded its possession. 

\.Jj 



176 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

It is painful to state, that the Mayor promptly com- 
plied with their demand ! So agitated and alarmed had 
he become that in very weakness of spirit he ordered 
the sign to be hurled to the ground, and it was instant- 
ly broken in a thousand fragments by the infuriated 
populace. The sign being demolished the cry for Gar- 
rison was resumed more loudly than ever. It was 
now apparent that the multitude would not disperse 
till I left the building, and as egress out of the front 
door was impossible, the Mayor and some of his assist- 
ants as well as some of my friends earnestly besought 
me to escape in the rear of the building. At this 
moment an abolition brother, whose mind had been 
previously settled on the peace question, in his anguish 
and alarm for my safety, and in the view of the help- 
lessness of the civil authority, said, C I must henceforth 
repudiate the principle of non-resistance. When the 
civil arm is powerless, my own rights are trodden in 
the dust, and the lives of my friends are put in immi- 
nent peril by ruffians, I will hereafter stand ready to 
defend myself and them at all hazards.' Putting my 
hand upon his shoulder, I said, ' Hold, my dear broth- 
er ! You know not what spirit you are of. Of what 
value or utility are the principles of peace and forgiv- 
ness, if we may repudiate them in the hour of peril and 
suffering ? Do you wish to become like one of those 
violent and blood-thirsty men who are seeking my life? 
Shall we give blow for blow, and array sword against 
sword ? God forbid ! I will perish sooner than raise 
my hand against any man, even in self-defence, and 
let none of my friends resort to violence for my protec- 
tion. If my life be taken, the cause of emancipation 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 177 

will not suffer. God reigns — his throne is undisturbed 
by this storm-— he will make the wrath of man to 
praise him, and the remainder he will restrain — his om- 
nipotence will at length be victorious.' 

Preceded by my faithful and beloved friend Mr. 

J R C , I dropped from a back window 

on to a shed, and narrowly escaped falling headlong 
to the ground. We entered into a carpenter's shop, 
through which we attempted to get into Wilson's 
Lane, but found our retreat cut off by the mob. They 
raised a shout as soon as we came in sight, but the 
proprietor promptly closed the door of his shop, kept 
them at bay for a time, and thus kindly afforded me 
an opportunity to find some other passage. I told 
Mr. C. it would be futile to attempt to escape — I 
would go out to the mob, and let them deal with me 
as they might elect ; but he thought it was my duty 
to avoid them as long as possible. We then went up 
stairs, and finding a vacancy in one corner of the 
room, I got into it, and he and a young lad piled up 
some boards in front of me, to shield me from obser- 
vation. In a few minutes several ruffians broke into the 
chamber, who seized Mr. C. in a rough manner, and led 
him out to the view of the mob, saying, 'This is not 
Garrison, but Garrison's and Thompson's friend, and he 
says he knows where Garrison is, but won't tell.' Then 
a shout of exultation was raised by the mob, and what 
became of him I do not know ; though, as I was imme- 
diately discovered, I presume he escaped without mate- 
rial injury. On seeing me, three or four of the rioters, 
uttering a yell, furiously dragged me to the window, 
with the intention of hurling me from that height to the 



178 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

ground ; but one of them relented, and said, ' Don't 
let us kill him outright.' So they drew me back, and 
coiled a rope about my body — probably to drag me 
through the streets. I bowed to the mob, and request- 
ing them to wait patiently until I could descend, went 
down upon a ladder that was raised for that purpose. 
I fortunately extricated myself from the rope, and was 
seized by two or three of the leading rioters, powerful 
and athletic men, by whom I was dragged along bare- 
headed, (for my hat had been knocked off and cut in 
pieces on the spot,) a friendly voice in the crowd 
shouting, 'He shan't be hurt! He is an American ! ' 
This seemed to excite sympathy in the breasts of some 
others, and they reiterated the same cry. Blows, 
however, were aimed at my head by such as were of 
a cruel spirit, and at last they succeeded in tearing 
nearly all my clothes from my body. Thus was I 
dragged through Wilson's Lane into State street, in 
the rear of the City Hall, over the ground that was 
stained with the blood of the first martyrs in the cause 
of Liberty and Independence, in the memorable mas- 
sacre of 1770 ; and upon which was proudly unfurled, 
only a few years since, with joyous acclamations, the 
beautiful banner presented to the gallant Poles by the 
young men of Boston ! What a scandalous and re- 
volting contrast ! My offence was in pleading for lib- 
erty — liberty for my enslaved countrymen, colored 
though they be — liberty of speech and of the press 
for all ! And upon that ' consecrated spot ' I was 
made an object of derision and scorn. 

They proceeded with me in the direction of the 
City Hall, the cry being raised, ' To the Common ! ' 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 179 

whether to give me a coat of tar and leathers, or to 
throw me into the pond, was problematical. As we 
approached the south door, the Mayor attempted to 
protect me by his presence ; but as he was unassisted 
by any show of authority or force, he was quickly 
thrust aside ; and now came a tremendous rush on the 
part of the mob to prevent my entering the hall. For 
a time the conflict was desperate ; but at length a res- 
cue was effected by a posse that came to the help of 
the Mayor, by whom I was carried up to the Mayor's 
room. 

In view of my denuded condition, one individual in 
the Post office below stairs kindly lent me a pair of 
pantaloons, another a coat, a third a stock, a fourth a 
cap, &c. After a brief consultation, the mob densely 
surrounding and threatening the City Hall and Post 
Office, the Mayor and his advisers said that my life 
depended on committing me to jail, ostensibly as a 
disturber of the peace. Accordingly a hack was got 
ready at the door and I was put into it, supported by 
Sheriff Parkman and Ebenezer Bailey, the Mayor 
leading the way. And now ensued a scene which 
baffles all description. As the ocean lashed to fury 
by a storm, seeks to whelm a bark beneath the waves, 
so did the mob, enraged at their disappointment, rush 
like a whirlwind upon the frail vehicle in which I sat, 
and endeavored to drag me out of it. Escape seemed 
a physical impossibility. They clung to the wheels — 
dashed open the doors — seized hold of the horses — 
and tried to upset the carriage. They were, however, 
vigorously repulsed by the police, a constable sprang 
in by my side, the doors were closed, and the driver, 



180 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

using his whip on the bodies of the horses and the 
heads of the rioters, happily made an opening through 
the crowd, and drove with all speed to Leverett 
street. 

In a few moments I was locked up in a cell, safe 
from my persecutors, accompanied by two delightful 
associates, a good conscience and a cheerful mind. In 
the course of the evening several of my friends came 
to my grated window to sympathise and confer with 
me, with whom I held strengthening conversation, till 
the hour of retirement, when I threw myself on my 
prison bed, and slept tranquilly. In the morning, I 
inscribed upon the walls of my cell, with a pencil, the 
following lines: 

'Wm. Lloyd Garrison was put into this cell on 
Wednesday afternoon, Oct. 21, 1835, to save him from 
the violence of a "respectable and influential" mob, 
who sought to destroy him for preaching the abomin- 
able and dangerous doctrine that "all men are created 
equal," and that all oppression is odious in the sight 
of God. "Hail, Columbia ! " Cheers for the Autocrat 
of Russia, and the Sultan of Turkey ! 

Reader, let this inscription remain till the last slave 
in this despotic land be loosed from his fetters.' 

' When peace within the bosom reigns, 

And conscience gives th' approving voice, 

Though bound the human form in chains, 
Yet can the soul aloud rejoice. 

'Tis true, my footsteps are confined — 

I cannot range beyond this cell ; 
But what can circumscribe my mind ? 

To chain the winds attempt as well ! ' 



THE RESPECTABLE BOSTON MOB. 181 

' Confine me as a prisoner — but bind me not as a slave. 
Punish me as a criminal — but bold me not as a chattel. 
Torture me as a man — but drive me not like a beast. 
Doubt my sanity — but acknowledge my immortality.' 

In the course of the forenoon, after passing through 
the mockery of an examination, for form's sake, before 
Judge Whitman, I was released from prison ; but, at 
the earnest solicitation of the city authorities, in order 
to tranquilize the public mind, I deemed it proper to 
leave the city for a few days, accompanied by my wife, 
whose situation was such as to awaken the strongest 
solicitude for her life." 

At this distance of time it is difficult to conceive of 
such scenes as occurring in Boston. They are to be ac- 
counted for by two things. First, the intense keen- 
ness of the instincts of the Slave-holding power in the 
United States, in discriminating from afar what the re- 
sults of the Anti-Slavery discussion would be, and the 
real power which was arising in the apparently feeble 
body of the Abolitionists ; and second, the thousand 
ties of politics, trade, blood relationship, friendship 
and religion that interlaced the South with the North, 
and made the North for many years a tool of southern 
dictators and a mere reflection of southern sympathies. 
There was scarcely a thing in northern society that 
was not interwoven and intertwisted with southern 
society. Northern schools and colleges were full of 
southern scholars — northern teachers were all the while 
seeking places on southern plantations. The great 
political bodies had each its southern wing, every 
religious denomination had its southern members and 
southern interests. Every kind of trade and industrial 



182 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

calling had its southern outlet. The ship builders of 
Maine went to Charleston for their cargoes. Planta- 
tions were fitted out at the North, by every kind of 
trade. Our mercantile world was truly and in fact 
one firm w T ith the South and felt any disturbance to 
them as virtually as the South itself. 

Hence Garrison's instinctive feeling that the battle 
was to be fought in the North, where as yet there was 
a free press and the right of free speech. 

It was not long before the South perceived that if 
free inquiry and free discussion were going to be al- 
lowed in Massachusetts, it would be all over with them, 
and like men who were brought up always to have 
their own way and had but to command to be obeyed, 
several southern states sent immediate and earnest 
communications to the Massachusetts Legislature, re- 
questing the General Court to enact laws making it 
penal for the citizens of Massachusetts to form aboli- 
tion societies or print and publish abolition sentiments. 

The Governor of Massachusetts, in his message to 
the Legislature at this time, expressed his belief 
that the abolitioinsts were guilty of an offence punisha- 
ble by common law. 

This part of the Governor's message, together with 
the resolutions from the Legislatures of slave-holding 
states, was referred to a committee of five. 

The Massachusetts An ti- Slavery Society addressed 
a memorial to this committee, praying to be permitted 
to appear before them and show that they had done 
nothing but what they had a perfect constitutional 
right to do by the laws of Massachusetts. 

On the Fourth and Eighth of March, 1836, these me- 



COMMITTEE OF THE LEGISLATURE. 183 

morable interviews took place at the state house, in the 
chamber of the representatives. 

A committee of some of the leading abolitionists 
attended — Mr. I. May, Mr. E. Gray Loring, Mr. Sewell, 
Dr. Follen, of Harvard College, and Mr. Garrison. 
Dr. Channing also met with them as an expression of 
sympathy and to mark his sense of the vitally impor- 
tant nature of the transactions to the rights of per- 
sonal liberty in Massachusetts. 

The meeting was attended by many spectators, and 
the abolitionists had opportunity to defend their course 
and conduct. 

Mr. Garrison's speech at this time is one of the most 
energetic and characteristic of his utterances. After 
alluding to the duty of all men to plead for the rights 
of the dumb and the oppressed, he then went on to 
say: 

"Mr. Chairman, there is one aspect of this great ques- 
tion which has not yet been presented to the commit- 
tee. The liberties of the people of the free States 
are identified with those of the slave population. If 
it were not so, there would be no hope, in my breast, 
of the peaceful deliverance of the latter class from 
their bondage. Our liberties are bound together by 
a ligament as vital as that which unites the Siamese 
twins. The blow which cuts them asunder, will in- 
evitably destroy them both. Let the freedom of speech 
and of the press be abridged or destroyed, and the 
nation itself will be in bondage ; let it remain untram- 
melled, and southern slavery must speedily come to an 
end." The chairman of the committee however in- 
sulted the abolitionists, refused them a fair hearing, 
and substantially turned them out of the Legislature, to 



184 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

protest at their leisure. The Legislature however did 
not pass the laws demanded by the South. 

Miss Martineau, who visited Boston in those days, 
described feelingly what she justly called the martyr 
age in America, 

The abolitionists in Boston at this time, were ostra- 
cized from genteel society. Rank and fashion cut 
them in the street, and crossed out their names from 
visiting lists. Whoever joined them must expect as a 
matter of course to give up what was called in Boston, 
good society. 

Their houses were constantly threatened by anony- 
mous letters, nor was the threat a vain one. 

One of the most accomplished women of Boston, 
whose genius and beauty and fine manners won her a 
distinguished position afterwards in European society, 
lives to remember now, how her house was fired while 
she was still an invalid in her chamber with an infant 
daughter only three weeks old, and how she was 
obliged to sit by an open window to get air for her- 
self and infant, from the smoke that filled the house 
after the fire had been discovered and brought under. 

Now there were in the whole North, thousands of 
people who thought slavery a wrong, an inhumanity, 
and who wished with a greater or less degree of ardor 
that it might cease from the earth. But all these peo- 
ple were associated for some purpose social, moral or 
religious, with people at the South, who were in a state 
of feverish combativeness on this subject, who were 
accustomed to command from their cradles, impatient 
of contradiction, and violent in their passions ; and in 
every way and form, and every branch of life in state 



LOGICAL VIGOR OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS. 185 

and church, the demand was stringent and imperative: 
You shall not say that slavery is wrong — you shall not 
agitate that question or discuss it at all, and you shall 
join with us to discountenance and put down all who 
endeavor to agitate the public mind. If you don't we 
won't have any thing to do with you or your pur- 
poses or schemes." 

This was the language which kept the whole North 
boiling like a pot for years. On the one hand, the 
force of conscience and humanity, and on the other, 
the passionate determined resistance of the South ope- 
rating through northern men, who, though disliking 
slavery yet had their various purposes to carry, for 
which they needed the help of the South. 

So even the religious societies felt that their great 
moral and religious work was so important that they 
must yield a little, in order to gain the help of south- 
ern Christians. The Tract Society struck out from 
English reprints every line and sentence which might 
be supposed to reprove slavery ; the Sunday School 
Union followed suit. The various religious bodies, 
embarrassed by their southern wings, spent their time 
in every annual meeting in ingenious skirmishing, in 
which the main body sought to keep the peace be- 
tween the active minority of abolitionists, and the irri- 
tated, determined, dictatorial southern brethren, whose 
sentiments were exactly expressed by Dr. Plummer, of 
Virginia : 

"If abolitionists will set the world in a blaze, it is 
but fair that they should receive the first warming at 
the fire. Let them understand that they will be 
caught if they come among us, and they will take 
good heed to keep out of our way ; there is not one 



186 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

among them that has any idea of shedding his blood 
for his cause." 

The ministers of the slaveholding region were driv- 
en on by the unsparing, uncompromising slave-owners, 
and were the most high-handed defenders of the sys- 
tem. Northern religious bodies, in order to carry on 
their purposes in union with the South, were obliged 
to make constant concessions at which their conscience 
revolted. The Methodist church, in 1840, passed a 
law forbidding their colored members to give testimo- 
ny in church trials in slave States. The debates on 
this question are worth looking back to now, as they 
give a dramatic reality to the great driving, pushing 
process which was then going on in favor of slavery. 

A trembling brother, after voting for this astounding 
prohibition, which took away the last hope of even a 
hearing in Christ's church for the poor hunted slave — 
rose the day after he had helped pass it, and humbly 
and plaintively tried to get it taken back. 

He said that the resolution "was introduced under 
peculiar circumstances, during considerable excite- 
ment, and he went for it as a 'peace offering to the 
South, without sufficiently reflecting upon the precise 
import of its phraseology, but after a little delibera- 
tion he was sorry ! He was convinced that if the res- 
olution remained on the journal, it would be disas- 
trous to the whole Northern church." 

Dr. A. J. Few, of Georgia, arose, and it is instruc- 
tive to see how resolute men, who have made up their 
minds, and know exactly what they mean to do, de- 
spise timid men, who are divided between policy and 
conscience. Dr. Few said : 



LOGICAL VIGOR OF THE SLAVEHOLDERS. 187 

"Look at it! What do you declare to us, in taking 
this course ! Why, simply, as much as to say, ' We 
cannot sustain you in the condition which you cannot 
avoid ! We cannot sustain you in the necessary con- 
ditions of slaveholding ; one of its necessary conditions 
being the rejection of negro testimony!' If it is not 
sinful to hold slaves, under all circumstances, it is not 
sinful to hold them in the only condition, and under the 
only circumstances in which they can be held. The re- 
jection of negro testimony is one of the necessary cir- 
cumstances under which slaveholding can exist; in- 
deed, it is utterly impossible for it to exist without it ; 
therefore it is not sinful to hold slaves in the condi- 
tion and under the circumstances in ivhich they are held 
at the South, inasmuch as they can be held under no 
other circumstances. * * * If you believe that 
slaveholding is necessarily sinful, come out with the 
abolitionists, and honestly say so. If you believe that 
slaveholding is necessarily sinful, you believe we are 
necessarily sinners; and if so, come out and honestly 
declare it, and let us leave you. * * * We want 
to know distinctly, precisely and honestly the position 
which you take. We cannot be tampered with by 
you any longer. We have had enough of it. We 
are tired of your sickly sympathies. * * * If you 
. are not opposed to the principles which it involves, 
unite with us, like honest men, and go home, and 
boldly meet the consequences." 

From this it appears that the Southern slaveocracy 
was not only a very united, determined body, but also 
remarkably logical as to the necessary ways and means 
which were essential to the support of their system, and 



188 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

that not only they were prepared to go the whole 
length themselves, but they meant to have nothing to 
do with any one who would not go the whole length 
with them. 

The result of this one victory was to split the Meth- 
odist church in two. Mr. Peck was right in supposing 
that there was yet enough conscience in the Northern 
Methodists to feel the impossibility of holding a book 
of discipline which called slavery "the sum of all vil- 
lainies," and yet keeping union with those who were 
making it the first object of life to uphold it. Some 
such crisis of conscience, always brought on by the 
slave-driving, dictatorial, determined and logical South, 
in time rent asunder all the principal denominations 
into a northern and southern wing. For however they 
might have been disposed towards the policy of non- 
intervention, the South never allowed them to stand 
long on that ground. They must not only cease to 
remonstrate against slavery, but help them by con- 
senting to positive laws and measures in its defence. 
So great was the power of this dictatorial spirit, that 
when the New School Presbyterian church had broken 
off from the great body of southern churches, who 
went with the Old School, yet the one or two synods 
who were left among them extorted from the whole 
body the decree that "masters ought not to be disci- 
plined for selling slaves without their consent, even 
when fellow members of the same churches with them- 
selves." 

Now this history of what went on in the church of 
America — for the church, meaning by it all the relig- 



garrison's disunionism. 189 

ious denominations, did embody as a general fact, the 
whole religious and moral force of the country, shows 
more strongly than anything else what was likely to be 
going on in bodies that did not profess any moral char- 
acter or considerations. If this was the state to which 
the dictation of the southern slavepower had driven 
the church, what was to be hoped of the political 
world and the world of trade ? 

Mr. Garrison looked over this dark field, and saw 
the battle — for there was a battle all over the land — 
a battle in which the truth and the right were being 
steadily, daily and everywhere beaten. The church 
and the world seemed to be vieing with each other 
who could retreat fastest before their victorious mas- 
ters, and every day some new right of humanity was 
thrown down for the pursuing army to worry and tear 
— -just as retreating fugitives throw back a lamb or a 
dog to stop a pack of hungry wolves. 

Garrison saw at once that the root of all this defeat 
and disaster was the desire of union with slaveholders, 
and forthwith he unfurled his banner and sounded his 
trumpet to the watchword, no union with slave- 
holders. 

Immediately the Constitution of the United States 
was brought up before him. Does not the constitu- 
tion form a union with slaveholders ? Has it not ex- 
press compromises designed to protect slave property ? 
Is not the basis of representation throughout all the 
southern states made on three-fifths of a slave popula- 
tion ? Now Mr. Garrison, what do you say to that ? 

"What I say," said Garrison, "is, that slavery is a 
sin against God and man, and if the constitution of 



190 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

the United States does agree to defend and protect it, 
it is a sinful league, and it is a covenant with death, 
and an agreement with hell," and out came the Libe- 
rator with the solemn curses of the old prophets at its 
head, and the Garrisonian abolitionists organized 
themselves on the principle that they would hold no 
union with slaveholders in church or in state, they would 
belong to no religious or secular body which did not 
treat slavery as a sin against God, and they would lift 
up their testimony against every person, party or de- 
nomination in church or in state that made any con- 
cession to the slaveholding power, for the sake of ac- 
complishing any purpose whatsoever. 

Here we see the whole scope of subject-matter for 
the Liberator, and for all the lectures and speeches 
from the platforms of the Garrisonian abolition socie- 
ties for years and years. For as there was scarcely a 
thing in society in those days that was not the joint 
work of the North and the South, and as the South 
never made a concession, of course there was through 
all the various ramifications of political, social and re- 
ligious' life, a continued series of concessions on the 
part of the North. These concessions were always, 
everywhere unsparingly discussed, reproved and de- 
nounced by the Garrisonians, and so there was contro- 
versy constantly and everywhere. 

The ministry of New England, from the days of 
President Edwards, had adopted a peculiar and pun- 
gent style of preaching immediate repentance of sin. 
They repudiated all half efforts, insensible approaches, 
dream-like floatings toward right, and narrowed the 
question of individual responsibility down to the pres- 



DENOUNCES THE CHURCH. 191 

ent moment, and urged repentance on the spot as the 
duty of all. Garrison had received his early education 
in this school, and he drove his preaching of immedi- 
ate repentance for the sin of slavery, his requirements 
for an instant clearing of the soul from all complicity 
with it, with the solemnity of an old Puritan. He 
had the whole language of the Old Testament at his 
tongue's end, and a text from the old prophets ready 
like an arrow on a bow-string, to shoot into every 
loop-hole of the concessions and compromises that 
were constantly going on. He reproved without fear 
or favor, ministers, elders, Christians, statesmen, gov- 
ernors, authors, and denounced the whole church as 
contaminated by the sanction and support it gave to 
the accursed thing. 

He was denounced in turn by the church as an infi- 
del and an opposer of religion, but he persisted in 
hurling right and left the stern denunciations of the 
Old Testament: "When thou sawest a thief, thou con- 
sentedst with him — thou hast been partaker with adul- 
terers," and he declared that the visible union of 
church and state with an organization which practiced 
systematic robbery on four millions of human beings, 
and made legal marriage among them an impossibility, 
was in the very highest sense consenting with thieves, 
and being made partakers with adultery. 

There is not the least doubt that the course of entire 
separation from slaveholders in church and state, would 
have been a perfect and efficient stop to the evil, could 
it have been compassed. Could we once imagine a 
state of things in which every man and woman in the 

United States who admitted that slavery was an injust- 
13 



192 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

ice, should come to the point of refusing all fellow- 
ship or connection with it, either in church or state, 
or in any of the traffic or intercourse of life, we should 
imagine a state in which there would have been imme- 
diately a majority which could have revised the con- 
stitution of the United States, and cast out the offens- 
ive clauses, as has since been done. 

But measures so stringent and thorough, supposed 
an education of the public conscience which had not 
yet taken place, and the Garrisonian Abolitionists 
therefore were always a small minority, extremely un- 
fashionable and every where spoken against. Small as 
they were, they were the indispensables of the great con- 
flict — its very heart. Garrison and his band of coadju- 
tors formed a steady force which acted night and day 
with unvarying consistency. While everybody else in 
the United States had something else to conserve, some 
side issues to make, some other point to carry, Garri- 
son and his band had but one thing to say — that Amer- 
ican slavery is a sin ; but one thing to do — to preach 
immediate repentance and forsaking of sin. They 
withdrew from every organization which could in any 
way be supposed to tolerate or hold communion with 
it, and walked alone, a small, but always active and 
powerful body. They represented the pure, abstract 
form of every principle as near as it is possible for it 
to be represented by human frailty. Free speech, free 
inquiry and freedom of conscience found perfect ex- 
pression in their meetings, and the Liberator was the 
one paper in which any honest, well-meaning person 
might print any conscientious opinion, however con- 
trary to those generally received in society. Of course 



THE SOUTHERNERS' OWN TESTIMONY. 193 

it became the channel for much crude thought, for 
much startling and strange expression ; and its circula- 
tion was confined almost entirely to the small party 
whose opinions it expressed. A large portion of the 
Liberator was every week devoted to extracts cut 
from southern papers, giving a vivid picture of the 
barbaric state of society, produced by slavery. Here, 
without note or comment, came the accounts clipped 
from different southern papers, of the assaults, frays 
and murders daily perpetrated by white men on each 
other in a land where violence was ever above law. 
There were, too, the advertisements of slave auctions 
and runaway negroes ; of blood-hounds kept for hu- 
man hunting ; while in a weekly corner called the 
" Refuge of Oppression," all the violent doctrines of 
the most rabid slave holders found every week a faith- 
ful reproduction in their own language. For an exact 
picture of the image and body of the most extreme 
form of southern slave holding and its results on socie- 
ty, the Liberator was as perfect a moral daguerreotype 
as could be produced. * 

A solemn instance of the terrible sequence of Divine 
retribution has been presented to this generation which 
will not soon be forgotten. All this disgusting, har- 
rowing, dreadful record of cruelty, crime and oppres- 
sion which the Liberator went on, year after year, in 
vain holding up to the inspection of the North, as be- 
ing perpetrated within the bounds of slaveholding 
society, was shrunk from as too dreadful and disgust- 
ing to be contemplated. 

"We do not wish to have our feelings harrowed; 
we do not wish to be appalled and disgusted with rec- 



194 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

ords of cruelty and crime," was the almost universal 
voice of good society at the North, as they went stead- 
ily on, compromising with and yielding to the exac- 
tions of a barbarous oligarchy. God so ordered it in 
return, that the cup of trembling which had so long 
been drunk by the slave alone, should be put into the 
hands of thousands of the sons and daughters of the 
free North. Thousands of them were starved, tortured, 
insulted, hunted by dogs, separated from home and 
friends, and left to linger out a cruel death in life, 
through the barbarity of those very slaveholders, with 
whose sins we had connived, with whose cruelties 
practiced on the helpless negroes we had refused to 
interfere. So awful a lesson of the justice of a living 
God we trust will never be forgotten. If every north- 
ern man and woman had from the very first been as 
careful in regarding the rights of the slave, as deter- 
mined to hold no fellowship with evil as Garrison, the 
solution of our great national question might have 
been a far more peaceful one. 

In the days of the great conflict, Mr. Garrison was 
accused of being in a bad spirit, of the utterance of 
violent, angry and abusive language. A very mistak- 
en idea of his personal character, in fact, went abroad 
in the world. 

In his personal intercourse he is peculiarly bland 
and urbane, one of the few men capable of conduct- 
ing an argument on the most interesting subject with- 
out the slightest apparent excitement of voice or man- 
ner, allowing his adversary every polite advantage 
and admitting all his just statements with perfect fair- 
ness. It is said that a fiery young southerner once fell 



HIS STEADY NERVES. 195 

into a discussion on slavery with him when he was 
travelling incog., on board a steamboat. G s arrison 
quite won his heart by the fairness and courtesy with 
which he discussed the subject, and brought him to 
admissions which the frank southerner in a good hu- 
mor was quite willing to make. On parting he said to 
him, " If that Garrison there in Boston were only like 
you, we should be more ready to listen to him." 

A great deal of this amiability doubtless is owing to 
the singular steadiness and healthiness of Garrison's 
nervous system. In this he was one of the most pecu- 
liarly constituted men, in whom nature ever combined 
traits expressly for a great work. All his personal 
habits are those of a methodical unexcitable man, and 
not in the least like the hurry and enthusiasm of a fanatic. 
He is methodical, systematic and precise in all his ar- 
rangements, neat and careful in respect to the minutest 
trifle. 

His handwriting is always of the finished complete- 
ness of a writing master, and in the most vehement de- 
nunciations, not a letter was ever misplaced or a com- 
ma or exclamation point, omitted. Every thing he 
ever wrote was perfected for the press as it left his 
pen. Such habits as these speak a composed and equa- 
ble nervous system. In fact, Garrison's nerves never 
knew what it was to shiver and vibrate either with 
irritation or with fear. He is gifted with the most per- 
fect imperturbable cheerfulness, which no outward dis- 
composure seems to have any power to shake. 
^ His politely bowing to the furious Boston mob be- 
fore descending to put himself in their hands, is a very 
characteristic thing, and during all the tossings and 



196 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

tumults of the hour that followed, Garrison was prob- 
ably the serenest person that ever had his clothes torn 
off his back for expressing his opinions. 

That language in the Liberator which looked to the 
world as if it must have been uttered in a passion, be- 
cause it was so far above the usual earnestness of ex- 
pression on such subjects, was in his case the result of 
a deliberate system. 

Garrison said that the world blinded conscience and 
made false issues with itself by the habitual call- 
ing of things by the wrong names ; that there was no 
kind of vice which might not be disguised under a 
polite phrase. Theft might be spoken of as an ingen- 
ious transfer of property — adultery as a form of the 
elective affinity, and so on, but that all such phraseol- 
ogy had an immoral tendency. 

In like manner the stealing of men and women from 
Africa — the systematic appropriation of all the fruits 
of their industry and labor — was robbery. Whoever 
did this was a thief. 

Garrison called slaveholders, no matter of what rank 
in society, of what personal amiabilities and virtues, man- 
thieves. Whoever formed union with slaveholders, 
united with man-thieves, and as the partaker in 
law is judged as being a thief, those who united with 
man-thieves became themselves thieves. 

Having reasoned this out logically, Garrison steadily 
and systematically applied these terms wherever he 
thought they applied. The Garrisonian tract, " The 
church a den of thieves," is a specimen of this kind 
of logic, and this unsparing use of terms. Whatever 
may be thought of the justice of such reasoning or the 



THINGS BY THEIR RIGHT NAMES. 197 

propriety of such logical application of terms, we still 
wish the fact to stand out clear, that these denuncia- 
tions were not boiled up by heated passions, but rea- 
soned out by logic, and that it was a part of a syste- 
matic plan to bring back the moral sense of society 
by a habit of calling things by discriminating names. 
Thus in the Liberator every agent of the United States 
who helped to catch and return a slave was always 
spoken of as a kidnapper — all defences of the fugi- 
tive slave law were familiarly denominated defences of 
kidnapping. Theodore Parker, in his sermons about 
the time of the fugitive slave law, makes very effec- 
tive use of these terms, and it is not to be denied that 
the habit of thus constantly using language which in 
a word makes a moral discrimination is a very power- 
ful influence in forming popular opinion. 

People will boggle a great while about fulfilling 
constitutional obligation when catching a slave is put 
in those terms, but when it is put as " kidnapping," 
the question becomes far more direct and simple. The 
Garrisonians doubtless were philosophical in the pre- 
cision of the moral nomenclature they adopted, and 
their success in stimulating drugged and paralyzed 
moral sentiment was largely owing to it. 

To be sure, in the application of wholesale moral 
syllogism to particular individual cases, there was 
often something that appeared extremely hard and 
unjust to the individual. When an amiable northern 
Doctor of Divinity, who never owned a slave in his 
life and never expected to, found himself cited in the 
Liberator by the familiar designation of a man-thief, 
because he had been in the General Assembly, good 



198 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

naturedly uniting with a large body of southern slave- 
holders in suppressing all inquiry into their great sys- 
tematic robbery, the northern Doctor was naturally 
indignant and so were all his friends and adherents. 

To be sure it was only a skillful turning of that syl- 
logistic crank by which New England theology demon- 
strated that every individual not conscious of a certain 
moral change of heart, was a malignant enemy of God, 
and had not a spark of moral excellence of any kind, 
no matter what sort of a man he might be, or what 
moral virtues he might practice. 

Garrison simply reversed the crank and turned this 
unsparing kind of logic back on the church and clergy, 
who felt some of the surprise and pain of the eagle in 
the fable who found himself shot through by an arrow 
feathered from his own wing ; and in both cases it may 
be doubted whether great moral syllogisms do not 
involve many instances of individual and personal in- 
justice. 

But it is best to let Garrison state his own case as 
he did in the Liberator : 

"I am accused of using hard language. I admit the 
charge. I have not been able to find a soft word to 
describe villainy, or to identify the perpetrator of it. 
The man who makes a chattel of his brother — what is 
he ? The man who keeps back the hire of his labor- 
ers by fraud — what is he ? They who prohibit the 
circulation of the Bible — what are they ? They who 
compel three millions of men and women to herd to- 
gether, like brute beasts — what are they ? They who 
sell mothers by the pound, and children in lots to suit 
purchasers — what are they ? I care not what terms 



ABOLITIONIST "HARD LANGUAGE." 199 

are applied to them, provided they do apply. If they 
are not thieves, if they are not tyrants, if they are not 
men-stealers, I should like to know what is their true 
character, and by what names they may be called. It 
is as mild an epithet to say that a thief is a thief, as it 
is to say that a spade is a spade. 

"The anti-slavery cause is beset with many dangers; 
but there is one which we have special reason to ap- 
prehend. It is that this hollow cant about hard lan- 
guage will insensibly check the free utterance of 
thought and close application of truth which have 
characterized abolitionists from the beginning. As 
that cause is becoming popular, and many may be in- 
duced to espouse it from motives of policy rather than 
from reverence for principle, let us beware how we 
soften our just severity of speech, or emasculate a 
single epithet. The whole scope of the English lan- 
guage is inadequate to describe the horrors and impu- 
rities of slavery. Instead therefore, of repudiating 
any of its strong terms, we rather need a new and 
stronger dialect. 

W 7? W 7T 7T w 

"The cry of hard language has become stale in my 
ears. The faithful utterance of that language has, by 
the blessing of God, made the anti-slavery cause what 
it is, ample in resources, strong in numbers, victorious 
in conflict. * * * Soft phrases and honeyed ac- 
cents were tried in vain for many a year ; — they had 
no adaptation to the subject. 'Canst thou draw out 
the leviathan, Slavery, with a hook? or his tongue 
with a cord which thou lettest down ? Canst thou put 
a hook into his nose ? or bore his jaw through with a 



200 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

tliorn ? Will lie make many supplications unto thee ? 
wilt thou take him for a servant forever ? Shall not 
one be cast down at the sight of him? Out of his 
nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or cald- 
ron. His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out 
of his mouth. His heart is as firm as a stone ; yea, as 
hard as a piece of the nether mill-stone. When he 
raiseth up himself, even the mighty are afraid. He 
esteemeth iron as straw, and brass as rotten wood.' 
0, the surpassing folly of those 'wise and prudent' 
men, who think he may be coaxed into a willingness 
to be destroyed, and who regard him as the gentlest 
of all fish — provided he be let alone ! They say it 
will irritate him to charge him with being a leviathan ; 
he will cause the deep to boil like a pot. Call him a 
dolphin, and he will not get angry ! If I should call 
these sage advisers by their proper names, no doubt 
they would be irritated too." 

The era of mob violence, which swept over the 
country in consequence of the anti-slavery agitation, 
led to a discussion of the peace question, in which 
Garrison took an earnest part as a champion of the 
principles of non-resistance, and in 1838 he led the 
way in organizing the New England Non-Resistance 
Society, whose declaration of sentiments was prepared 
by him. The active part taken by the women of the 
country in these moral changes, led to a discussion of 
the rights of women. Mr. Garrison was at once an 
advocate for the principle that women should be al- 
lowed liberty to do whatever God and nature qualified 
them to do — to vote, to serve on committees, and to 
take part in discussions on equal terms with the other 



PROTEST FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS. 201 

sex. Upon this principle there was a division in the 
Anti-Slavery Society in 1840; and in the World's 
Anti-Slavery Convention, held that year in London, 
Mr. Garrison, being delegate from that society, re- 
fused to take his seat because the female delegates 
from the United States were excluded. Probably no 
act of Mr. Garrison's eventful life was a more difficult 
and triumphant exercise of consistent principle than 
this. 

He had come over to England for sympathy, for at 
home he was despised, and rejected, and hated, and 
Exeter Hall was filled with an applauding, tumult- 
uous crowd, ready to make him the lion of the hour, 
but not ready to receive his female coadjutors. 

As usual, Mr. Garrison conferred not with flesh and 
blood for a moment, but rose, bade farewell to the 
society, and leaving his protest, walked out serenely 
through the crowd, and thus sealed his protest in favor 
of the equal rights of woman. 

The consideration that he thus renounced an over- 
whelming public sympathy, and cut himself loose from 
the patronage of all good society in England, could 
not weigh a moment with him in comparison with a 
principle, and the doctrine of the moral, social and 
political equality of woman may be said to have found 
in Garrison its first public champion. 

The question now arises : If Garrison and his little 
band were indeed morally right in their position — No 
union with slave-holders, on what ground did the 
whole valiant anti-slavery corps proceed who did not 
come out from the church or the state, but saw their 



202 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

way clear to remain in existing organizations, and 
fight in and by them. 

The free soil party of the political abolitionists gen- 
erally were headed by men of pure and vital moral 
sense, who believed just as sincerely as Mr. Garrison 
that slavery was a wrong and an injustice. How then 
could they avoid the inference that they could have 
no union with slave-holders ? The statement of this 
ground properly belongs to the biographical sketches 
of Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, which will im- 
mediately follow this. 

The Garrisonians, and Mr. Garrison at their head, 
had so perfect an instinct in their cause that they 
always could feel when a party was at heart morally 
sincere and in earnest. So, though they always most 
freely and most profusely criticised the works and 
ways of the political abolitionists, they were on the 
whole on excellent terms with them. 

They had gotten up such a name for speaking just 
their minds of every body and thing, that their priv- 
ilege of criticism came to be allowed freely, and on 
the whole the little band was thought by the larger 
one to do good political work by their more strictly 
and purely moral appeals to the conscience of the 
community. Where there had been pretty active 
Garrisonian labor in lecturing, came in the largest po- 
litical vote. 

It is but justice to say that Mr. Garrison's conduct 
throughout his course demonstrated that it was not a 
constitutional love of opposition, or a delight in fault- 
finding which inspired his denunciations of slavery 
and of the Union as the defence of slavery. For 



THE TRIUMPH OF HIS CAUSE. 203 

from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, Gar- 
rison became a warm, enthusiastic Unionist. When 
the United States flag, cleansed of all stain of slavery, 
was once more erected on Fort Sumter, Garrison 
made the voyage down to testify by his presence at the 
scene his devotion and loyalty to the flag of his coun- 
try. 

Garrison's non-resistant principles did not allow him 
to take any active part in the war. But in the same 
manner they caused him to allow perfect and free tol- 
eration to such of his sons as desired to enter the 
army. The right of individual judgment in every 
human being was always sacred with him, and the 
military command which took possession of Charleston 
had among its officers a son of William Lloyd Garri- 
son. 

The scene in the Boston Music Hall, on the 1st of 
January, 1864, when the telegraphic dispatch of the 
Emancipation Proclamation was received by an enthu- 
siastic concourse of citizens, and welcomed by the first 
literary talent of Boston, was one of those occurrences 
of the visible triumph of good men in their day and 
generation, of which the slavery conflict gives many 
instances. 

This scene was in all respects a remarkable one, as 
marking the moral progress of Boston, but in order to 
feel its full power we must again run our eye over the 
events of the past few years, of which it was the out- 
come. 

It was only thirty-four years since the Legislature 
of Georgia had passed an act signed by Gov. Lump- 
kin, offering the sum of five thousand dollars for who- 



204 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

ever would bring into the State of Georgia the per- 
son of William Lloyd Garrison, there to answer to the 
laws of Georgia for the publication of the Liberator — 
an "incendiary sheet." Everybody knew that this 
proclamation meant a short shrift and a long rope to 
Garrison, but there was at that time no counter move- 
ment on the part of his own State for his protection, 
no official declaration on the part of the Massachusetts 
Legislature to certify that she considered offering re- 
wards for the kidnapping of her citizens to be a viola- 
tion of State rights. In fact, so completely was Gar- 
rison, thus threatened by the South, unprotected by 
law and public sentiment at the North, that five years 
later, when the outcry from slaveholding legislatures 
became stronger, a Massachusetts Governor actually 
recommended imposing pains and penalties on the 
abolitionists for the discussion of the subject, and the 
Legislature actually took into discussion the propriety 
of doing so. 

Was ever thirty years productive of a greater moral 
change than this 1st of January, 1864, witnessed? 

An assemblage of all that Boston had to show of 
intellect, scholarship, art, rank and fashion, all came 
together of one accord to one place to celebrate the 
triumph of those great principles for which Garrison 
had once been dragged with a rope ignominiously 
through the streets of Boston. 

Now that serene head, with its benevolent calmness, 
rising in one of the most conspicuous and honored 
seats in the house, was the observed of all observers. 
The hisses of mob violence, the scoffs and sneers, had 
changed to whispered tributes all over the house, 



THE TRIUMPH OF HIS CAUSE. 205 

"There he is, look!" and mothers pointed him to 
their children. "There is the good man who had the 
courage to begin this glorious work, years ago!" 

Of Garrison's appearance at this time, it is sufficient 
to say that it was no more nor less serene and un- 
troubled than when he stood amid the hisses of the 
mob in Faneuil Hall. He had always believed in this 
victory as steadfastly in the beginning as in the end, 
for God, who makes all his instruments for his own 
purposes, had given him in the outset that u faith 
which is the substance of things hoped for, and the 
evidence of things not seen," and to God alone, with- 
out a thought of self, did he ascribe the glory. 

On the 1st of January, 1865, Mr. Garrison having 
finished the work for which the Liberator was estab- 
lished in Boston, came out with his last editorial an- 
nouncing the discontinuing of that paper. He says : 

"The object for which the Liberator was commenc- 
ed — the extermination of chattel slavery — having 
been gloriously consummated, it seems to me specially 
appropriate to let its existence cover the historic peri- 
od of the great struggle ; leaving what remains to be 
done to complete the work of emancipation to other 
instrumentalities, (of which I hope to avail myself,) 
under new auspices, with more abundant means and 
with millions instead of hundreds for allies. 

"Most happy am I to be no longer in conflict with 
the mass of my fellow-countrymen on the subject of 
slavery. For no man of any refinement or sensibility 
can be indifferent to the approbation of his fellow- 
men, if it be rightly earned. But to obtain it by go- 
ing with the multitude to do evil, is self-degradation 



206 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

and personal dishonor. Better to be always in a mi- 
nority of one with God — branded as a madman, incen- 
diary, fanatic, heretic, infidel — frowned upon by the 
powers that be, and mobbed by the populace — or 
consigned ignominiously to the gallows, like him 
whose 'soul is marching on,' though his 'body lies 
mouldering in the grave,' or burnt to ashes at the 
stake, like Wickliffe, or nailed to the cross, like Him 
who 'gave himself for the world,' in defence of the 
right, than like Herod, having the shouts of the mul- 
titude crying, ' It is the voice of a god, and not of a 
man! ' 

"Commencing my editorial career when only twenty 
years of age, I have followed it continuously till I have 
attained my sixtieth year — first in connection with The 
Free Press, in Newburyport, in the spring of 1826; 
next, with The National Philanthropist, in Boston, in 
1827 ; next, with The Journal of the Times, in Ben- 
nington, Vt, in 1828-9 ; next, with The Genius of 
Universal Emancipation, in Baltimore, in 1829-30 ; and 
finally, with the Liberator, in Boston, from the 1st of 
January, 1831, to the 1st of January, 1866, — at the 
start, probably the youngest member of the editorial 
fraternity in the land, now, perhaps, the oldest, not in 
years, but in continuous service, — unless Mr. Bryant, 
of the New York Evening Post, be an exception. 

" Whether I shall again be connected with the press, 
in a similar capacity, is quite problematical ; but at my 
period of life, I feel no prompting to start a new jour- 
nal at my own risk, and with the certainty of strug- 
gling against wind and tide, as I have done in the 
past. 



THE LIBERATOR ."DISCONTINUED." 207 

"I began the publication of the Liberator without a 
subscriber, and I end it — it gives me unalloyed satis- 
faction to say — without a farthing as the pecuniary re- 
sult of the patronage extended to it during thirty- 
five years of unremitted labors. 

" From the immense change wrought in the national 
feeling and sentiment on the subject of slavery, the 
Liberator derived no advantage at any time in regard 
to its circulation. 
******* 

"Farewell, tried and faithful patrons ! Farewell, gen- 
erous benefactors, without whose voluntary but essen- 
tial pecuniary contributions the Liberator must have 
long since been discontinued ! Farewell, noble men 
and women who have wrought so long and so suc- 
cessfully, under God, to break every yoke ! Hail, ye 
ransomed millions ! Hail, year of jubilee ! With a 
grateful heart and a fresh baptism of the soul, my last 
invocation shall be — 

' Spirit of Freedom ! on — 

Oh ! pause not in thy flight 
Till every clime is won, 

To worship in thy light : 
Speed on thy glorious way, 

And wake the sleeping lands ! 
Millions are watching for the ray, 

And lift to thee their hands. 
Still ' Onward ! ' be thy cry — 

Thy banner on the blast ; 
And as thou rushest by, 

Despots shall shrink aghast. 
On ! till thy name is known 

Throughout the peopled earth j 

14 



208 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON". 

On ! till thou reign'st alone, 
Man's heritage by birth ; 
On ! till from every vale, and where the mountains rise, 
The beacon lights of Liberty shall kindle to the skies ! ' 

WM. LLOYD GARRISON." 

There were those in the party of the Garrisonian 
Abolitionists "whose course at this time seemed to jus- 
tify the popular impression that faultfinding had so 
long been their occupation, that they were not willing 
to accept even their own victory at the price of giv- 
ing up their liberty of denunciation. It is doubtless 
very dangerous to the finer tissues of one's moral na- 
ture to live only to deny and contend and rebuke. 

But Mr. Garrison showed conclusively that it was 
love of right and not love of contention, that animated 
him by this prompt, whole hearted acknowledgment 
of the good when it came. No American citizen 
ever came more joyfully and lovingly into the great 
American Union, than he who so many years had 
stood outside of it, for conscience' sake ; and he showed 
just as much steadiness and independence in disre- 
garding the criticisms of some of his former coadjutors, 
as he formerly had in disregarding those of pro-slavery 
enemies. He would not say that a work was not done 
which was done — he was honest and fair in acknowl- 
edging honest and fair work, and he very wisely dis- 
tinguished between emancipation, as a fixed and final 
fact, and reconstruction, as belonging to the new era 
founded on emancipation. In his last editorial he very 
quietly and sensibly states his views on this subject, 
and repels the charge which had been made that he 



VISIT TO ENGLAND. 209 

was deserting the battle before the victory was won. 
He ends by saying : 

"I shall sound no trumpet and make no parade as to 
what I shall do for the future. After having gone 
through with such a struggle as has never been paral- 
leled in duration in the life of any reformer, and for 
nearly forty years been the target at which all pois- 
onous and deadly missiles have been hurled, and having 
seen our great national iniquity blotted out, and free- 
dom ' proclaimed throughout all the land to all the 
inhabitants thereof,' and a thousand presses and pul- 
pits supporting the claims of the colored population 
to fair treatment where not one could be found to do 
this in the early days of the anti-slavery conflict, I might, 
it seems to me — be permitted to take a little repose in 
my advanced years, if I desired to do so. But, as yet, 
I have neither asked nor wished to be relieved of any 
burdens or labors connected with the good old cause. 
I see a mighty work of enlightenment and regenera- 
tion yet to be accomplished at the South, and many 
cruel wrongs done to the freedmen which are yet to 
be redressed; and I neither counsel others to turn 
away from the field of conflict, under the delusion that 
no more remains to be done, nor contemplate such a 
course in my own case." 

Mr. Garrison's health, which had suffered severely 
from his long labors, required the relief of foreign 
travel. 

He once more revisited England, where his course 
was one unbroken triumph. A great breakfast was 
given in his honor at St. James' Hall, London, at which 
John Bright presided. The Duke of Argyle present- 



210 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. 

ed a complimentary address to Mr. Garrison, congrat- 
ulating him on the successful termination of the Anti- 
Slavery struggle. Lord John Russell seconded this 
address, and at this time magnanimously retracted cer- 
tain hasty sayings in regard to the recent conflict in 
America, at its commencement. In the city of Edin- 
burgh he was received in a crowded public meeting 
with tumultuous cheering, and the freedom of the city 
was solemnly presented to him by the Lord Provost 
and magistracy. In a private letter he says : 

" I need not tell you that I went to England with no 
purpose or thought of being lionized, but only quietly 
to see old friends, to seek recreation, hoping to reno- 
vate my failing health by the voyage. But I shall 
ever gratefully remember those friendly manifestations 
towards me and my native land." 

In conclusion, it is but justice to human nature in 
general and to New England in particular, to say that 
the poets of New England, true to a divine inspira- 
tion always honored Garrison, even in his days of deep- 
est darkness and rebuke. Longfellow, Russell, Low^ell, 
Whittier and Emerson, came out boldly with Anti- 
Slavery poems. They were the wise men, star-led, 
who brought to the stable and the manger of the in- 
fant cause, the gold, frankincense and myrrh. It was 
a great opportunity, and they had grace given them to 
use it, and not all the fame they had won otherwise, 
honors them so much as those tributes to humanity 
and liberty which they bestowed in the hour of her 
utmost need. 

We will conclude this sketch by a letter from Mr. 
Garrison, which best shows the spirit in which he re- 
gards the result of the great conflict. 



letter to mrs. stowe. 211 

" Dear Mrs. Stowe : 

For your very appreciative and congratulatory let- 
ter on the "marvellous work of the Lord," which the 
Liberator marks as finished, I proffer you my heart- 
felt thanks, and join with you in a song of thanksgiv- 
ing to Him, who, by a mighty hand and an out- 
stretched arm has set free the captive millions in our 
land. 

"The instrumentalities which the God of the oppress- 
ed has used for the overthrow of the slave system, 
have been as multifarious and extraordinary as that 
system has been brutal and iniquitous. Every thing 
that has been done, whether to break the yoke or to 
rivet it more strongly, has been needed to bring about 
the great result. The very madness of the South has 
worked as effectively anti-slavery-wise as the most 
strenuous efforts of the abolitionists. 

" The outlawry of all Northern men of known hos- 
tility to slavery — the numberless pro-slavery mobs and 
lynchings, her defiant and awful defence of the traffic 
in human flesh, her increasing rigor and cruelties tow- 
ards the slaves, and finally her horrible treason and re- 
bellion to secure her independence as a vast slavehold- 
ing empire, through all time, all mightily helped to de- 
feat her impious purpose and to hasten the year of 
jubilee. Thus it is that 

God moves in a mysterious way, 

His wonders to perform ; 
He plants his footsteps in the sea, 

And rides upon the storm. 

And who but God is to be glorified ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHARLES SUMNER. 

Mr. Sumner an Instance of Free State High Culture — The " Brahmin Caste " of 
New England — The Sumner Ancestry ; a Kentish Family — Governor Increase 
Sumner; His Revolutionary Patriotism — His Stately Presence; "a Governor 
that can Walk " — Charles Sumner's Father — Mr. Sumner's Education, Legal 
and Literary Studies — Tendency to Ideal Perfection — Sumner and the Whigs 
— Abolitionism Social Death — Sumner's Opposition to the Mexican War — His 
Peace Principles — Sumner opposes Slavery Within the Constitution, as Garri- 
son Outside of it — Anti-Slavery and the Whigs — The Political Abolitionist 
Platform — Webster asked in vain to Oppose Slavery — Sumner's Rebuke of 
Winthrop — Joins the Free Soil Party — Succeeds Webster in the Senate — Great 
Speech against the Fugitive Slave Law — The Constitution a Charter of Liber- 
ty — Slavery not in the Constitution — First Speech after the Brooks Assault — 
Consistency as to Reconstruction. 

In the example of Abraham Lincoln we have shown 
the working man, self-educated, rising to greatness and 
station, under influences purely American. It is our 
pride to say that in no other country of the world 
could a man of the working classes have had a career 
like that of Lincoln. 

We choose now another name made famous by the 
great struggle for principle and right which has ended 
in our recent war. As Lincoln is a specimen of the 
facilities, means of self-education and advance in life 
which America gives to the working man, so Charles 
Sumner is a specimen of that finish, breadth, and ex- 
tent of culture which could be produced by the best 
blood and the best educational institutions of the 
oldest among the/ree States of America. 

214 




C^ ^Cv*^j^ «-/ Cc^lvt^T^l 



THE SUMNER ANCESTRY. 215 

We may speak properly of the blood of the Sumner 
family, for they belong to what Dr. Oliver Wendell 
Holmes so happily characterizes as the " Brahmin caste 
of New England," that "harmless, inoffensive, untitled 
aristocracy," in whom elevated notions of life, and 
aptitudes for learning, seem, in his own words, to be 
"hereditary and congenital." " Families whose names 
are always on college catalogues ; and who break out 
every generation or two in some learned labor which 
calls them up after they seem to have died out." A 
glance at the Cambridge catalogue will show a long 
line of Sumners, from 1723 down to the graduation of 
our present Senator. 

Like many other American families distinguished for 
energy and intellectual vigor, the Sumner family can 
trace back their lineage to the hardy physical stock of 
the English yeomanry. The race, afterwards emigrat- 
ing to Oxfordshire, had its first origin in Kent, and it 
is curious to see how to this day it preserves physical 
traits of its origin. The Kentish men were tall, strong, 
long-limbed, and hardy, much relied on for archery 
and holding generally the front of the battle. The 
Sumners in America have been marked men in these 
same physical points ; men of commanding stature 
and fine vital temperament, strong, athletic, and with 
the steady cheerfulness of good health and good di- 
gestion. 

One of the early ancestors of this family, who lived 
in Roxbury, is thus characterized in the Antiquarian 
Register: "Never was there a man better calculated 
for the sturdy labors of a yeoman. He was of colossal 
size and equal strength of muscle, which was kept in 



216 CHARLES SUMNER. 

tone by regularity and good habits. He shrunk from 
no labor, however arduous and fatiguing it might seem 
to others. Instances of the wonderful feats of strength 
performed by him were related after his death by his 
contemporaries in his native place and the vicinity." 

The son of this man was the venerated Increase 
Sumner, the cousin of Charles Sumner's father, one of 
the most distinguished Judges and Governors of Mas- 
sachusetts. He was indeed one of the nursing fathers 
of the State of Massachusetts during the critical pe- 
riod when, just emerging from the tutelage of Eng- 
land, she was trying the experiment of a State consti- 
tutional government. 

Some of the sayings of Increase Sumner are impor- 
tant, as showing of what stock it was that our present 
Massachusetts Senator came, and what were the family 
traditions in which he was educated. In a letter just 
in the beginning of the revolutionary war, he says : 

" The man who, regardless of public happiness, is 
ready to fall in with base measures, and sacrifice con- 
science, honor and his country, merely for his own 
advancement, must (if not wretchedly hardened,) feel 
a torture, the intenseness of which nothing in this 
world can equal." 

Again, in one of his judicial charges, he says : 

"America furnishes one of the few instances of 
countries where the blessings of civil liberty and the 
rights of mankind have been the primary objects of 
their political institutions ; in which the rich and poor 
are equally protected ; where the rights of conscience 
are fully enjoyed, and where merit and ability can be 
the only claim to the favor of the public. May we not 



A GOVERNOR THAT CAN WALK. 217 

then pronounce that man destitute of the true princi- 
ples of liberty and unworthy the blessing of society, 
who does not at all times lend his aid to support and 
maintain a government on the preservation of which 
depends his own political as well as private happi- 
ness?" 

Never was a Governor of Massachusetts carried to 
the chair with more popular enthusiasm than Increase 
Sumner, to which, doubtless, his stately person and 
appearance of high physical vigor added greatly. 
Hancock had been crippled with gout, and Adams had 
been bent with infirmity, and the populace, ever prone 
to walk by sight, were cheered by the stately step- 
pings of their new leader. "Thank God, we have got 
a Governor that can walk, at last," said an old apple 
woman, as he passed in state at the head of the legis- 
lative body, from hearing the election sermon in the 
Old South. 

The father of Charles Sumner was no less distin- 
guished for the personal and mental gifts of the family. 
He was an able lawyer, and for many years filled the 
office of high sheriff of Suffolk county, and is still 
spoken of with enthusiasm by those who remember 
him, as a magnificent specimen of a man of the noblest 
type ; noble in person, in manners and in mind, and of 
most immaculate integrity. He was the last high sher- 
iff who retained the antique dress derived from Eng- 
lish usage, and the custom well became his lordly per- 
son and graceful dignity of manner. 

Charles Sumner, therefore, succeeded to physical 
vigor, to patriotic sentiment 'and noble ideas as his 
birthright. His education was pursued in the Boston 



218 CHARLES SUMNER. 

Latin school and in Phillips Academy, which is still 
proud of the tradition of his sojourn, and lastly in 
Harvard College, where he graduated in 1830. 

In the same place he pursued his law studies, under 
Judge Story, and was admitted to the bar in 1834. No 
young man could rise more rapidly. He soon gained 
a large practice, and was appointed reporter of the 
Circuit Court of the United States, in which capacity 
he published three volumes, known as Sumner's Re- 
ports, containing the decisions of Judge Story. He 
also edited the American Jurist, a quarterly law journal. 
The first three winters after his admission to the bar he 
lectured in the Cambridge Law School with such ap- 
proval that in 1836, he was offered a professorship in 
the Law School, which he declined. 

In 1837 he visited Europe for purposes of travel 
and general improvement, and remained there for three 
years, returning in 1840. As the result of this so- 
journ, he added to his previous classical and legal 
knowledge an extensive and accurate acquaintance 
with the leading languages and literature of modern 
Europe. Possessed of a memory remarkable for its 
extent and accuracy, all these varied treasures were 
arranged in his mind where they could be found at a 
moment's notice. We have heard of his being present 
once at a dinner, among the Cambridge elite, when 
Longfellow repeated some French verses, which he 
said had struck him by their euphony and elegance, but 
to which he could not at the moment assign the name 
of the author. Sumner immediately rose from the 
table, took down a volume of Voltaire, and without a 
moment's hesitation turned to the passage. He has 



SUMNER AND THE WHIGS. 219 

sometimes been accused of a sort of pedantry in the 
frequent use of classical and historical illustration in 
his speeches, but the occurrence of these has been the 
result of a familiarity which made their use to him the 
most natural and involuntary thing in the world. 

In the outset of Sumner's career it was sometimes 
said of him that he was a brilliant theorizer, but that 
he would never be a practical politician. His mind, 
indeed, belongs to that class whose enthusiasms are 
more for ideas and principles than for men. He had 
the capacity of loving the absolute right, abstracted 
from its practical uses. There was a tendency in his 
mind to seek ideal perfection and completeness. In 
study, his standard was that of the most finished schol- 
arship ; in politics and the general conduct of life it 
was that of the severest models of the antique, ele- 
vated and refined by Christianity. 

He returned to his native city at a time when the 
intention in good faith to be an ideal patriot and Chris- 
tian, was in the general estimation of good society, a 
mark of a want of the practical faculties. The Whig 
party, in whose ranks, by birth and tradition, he be- 
longed, looked upon him as the' son of their right 
hand ; though they shook their heads gently at what 
seemed to them the very young and innocent zeal with 
which he began applying the weights and measures of 
celestial regions to affairs where, it was generally con- 
ceded, it would be fatal to use them. 

Just at this season, the great Babylon, which now 
is cast down with execration, sat as a queen at Wash- 
ington, and gave laws, and bewitched northern poli- 
ticians with her sorceries. Church and State were en- 



220 CHARLES SUMNER. 

tangled in her nets, and followed, half willingly, half 
unwilling, at her chariot wheels. The first, loudest, 
most importunate demand of this sorceress was, that the 
rule " Do unto others as ye would that others should 
do unto you " should be repealed. There was no ob- 
jection to its forming a part of the church service, and 
being admired in general terms, as an ideal fragment 
of the apostolic age, but the attempt to apply it to the 
regulation of national affairs was ridiculed as an ab- 
surdity, and denounced as a dangerous heresy. 

What then was the dismay of Beacon Street, the con- 
sternation of State Street, when this young laurelled 
son of Cambridge, fresh from his foreign tour, with 
all his career of honor before him, showed symptoms 
of declining towards the abolitionists. The abolition- 
ists, of all men ! Had not Garrison been dragged by 
a halter round his neck through the streets of Boston ? 
And did not the most respectable citizens cry, Well 
done ? Was it not absolute social and political death 
to any young man to fall into those ranks ? 

Had not the Legislature of the sovereign state of 
Georgia in an official proclamation signed by their 
governor, set a price on Garrison's head as an incen- 
diary, and had not a Governor of Massachusetts in his 
message to a Massachusetts Legislature, so far sympa- 
thized with his southern brethren as to introduce into 
his inaugural a severe censure of the abolitionists, and 
to intimate his belief that in their proceedings they 
were guilty of an offence punishable by common law ? 
Had not Massachusetts legislatures taken into respect- 
ful consideration resolutions from slaveholding legis- 
latures, dictating to them in that high style for which 



SUMNER AND THE WHIGS. 221 

such documents are famous, that they should pass laws 
making it penal to utter abolitionist sentiments ? 

All this had been going on during the three years 
while Sumner was in Europe, and now, when he was 
coming home to take his place as by right in the po- 
litical ranks, did it not become him to be very careful 
how he suffered indiscreet moral enthusiasm to betray 
him into expressions which might identify him with 
these despised abolitionists ? Was not that socially to 
forfeit his birthright, to close upon him every parlor 
and boudoir of Beacon Street, to make State Street 
his enemy, to shut up from him every office of ad- 
vancement or profit, and make him for every purpose 
of the Whig party a useless impracticable instrument ? 

And so the rising young man was warned to let 
such things alone ; not to strive for the impossible am- 
brosia of the higher morals, and to content himself 
like his neighbors, with the tangible cabbage of com- 
promise, as fitted to our mortal state. 

He was warned with fatherly unction, by comfort- 
able old Whigs, who to-day are shouting, even louder 
than he, " Down with Babylon, raze it, raze it to the 
foundations ! " 

But in spite of such warnings and cautions, Sumner 
became an ardent and thoroughgoing anti-slavery man, 
and did not hesitate to avow himself an abolitionist and 
to give public utterance to his moral feelings, contrary 
to the stringent discipline of the Whig party. 

On the 4th of July, 1844, Sumner pronounced in 
Boston, in view of the threatening Mexican war, an 
oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations." 



222 CHARLES SUMNER. 

This discussed the general questions of war from 
the Christian stand point, and deprecated the threat- 
ened one on Christian principles. It might have 
passed as a harmless peace tract in ordinary times, 
but just at this period, it was too evidently the raising 
a standard against Babylon to be considered accepta- 
ble doctrine, for had not Babylon issued a decree that 
Gospel or no Gospel, a war with Mexico must take 
place, so that she might gain more slave territory? 
Let the young man look to himself, applying such im- 
possible, impracticable tests to such delicate political 
questions ! The speech, however, was widely circu- 
lated, both here and in England, and was said by Cob- 
den to be one of the noblest contributions ever made 
to the cause of peace. 

November 4, 1845, Sumner spoke more decidedly 
against the Mexican war, in a public meeting at Fan- 
euil Hall, and the next year came out boldly in the 
Whig convention with an address, on "The Anti- Slav- 
ery Duties of the Whig Party." 

In this speech, Sumner, as openly as Garrison, de- 
clared himself the eternal opponent of slavery, and 
defined his position and marked out his work within 
the constitution of the United States, and by the con- 
stitution, just as Garrison had marked out his work 
outside of the constitution, and against it. 

Sumner took the ground that the constitution of 
the United States was not a covenant with death, or 
an agreement with hell, but an instrument designed to 
secure liberty and equal rights, and that the present 
sanction and encouragement it was giving to slavery 
was owing to a perversion of its original design. He 



ANTI-SLAVERY AND THE WHIGS. 223 

maintained that the constitution nowhere recognises 
slavery as an institution, that the slave is nowhere 
spoken of in it as a chattel but as a person, and that 
those provisions in the constitution which confer cer- 
tain privileges on slaveholders were supposed to be 
temporary compromises with what the founders of the 
constitution imagined would prove only a temporary 
institution — soon to pass entirely away from the coun- 
try. He asserts in this speech : 

"There is in the constitution no compromise on the 
subject of slavery of a character not to be reached 
legally and constitutionally, which is the only way in 
which I propose to reach it. Wherever power and 
jurisdiction are secured to Congress, they may un- 
questionably be exercised in conformity with the con- 
stitution. And even in matters beyond existing powers 
and jurisdiction there is a constitutional mode of ac- 
tion. TJie constitution contains an article pointing out 
how at any time amendments may be made thereto. 
This is an important article, giving to the constitution 
a progressive character, and allowing it to be moulded 
to suit new exigences and new conditions of feeling. 
The wise framers of this instrument clic\ not treat the 
country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after its in- 
fancy, but anticipated the changes incident to its 
growth." 

Accordingly, Sumner proposed to the Whig party, 
as a rallying watch-word, the 

Repeal of slavery under the constitution and 
laws of the Federal Government. 

• Of this course he said : "The time has passed when 
this can be opposed on constitutional grounds. It 



224 CHARLES SUMNER. 

will not be questioned by any competent authority, 
that Congress may by express legislation abolish slav- 
ery, 1st, in the District of Columbia; 2d, in the Ter- 
ritories, if there should be any ; 3d, that it may abol- 
ish the slave-trade on the high seas between the states; 
4th, that it may refuse to admit any new state with a 
constitution sanctioning slavery. Nor can it be doubt- 
ed that the people of the free States may in the man- 
ner pointed out by the constitution, proceed to its 
amendment." 

Here we have, in a few words, the platform of the 
Political Abolitionists, every step of which has actually 
been accomplished. 

But at that time it was altogether too exalted doc- 
trine to be received by the Whig party, and Sumner 
tried his eloquence upon them in vain. In vain he 
called upon Daniel Webster to carry out this glorious 
programme in his place in the Senate. • 

"Assume," he says, "these unperformed duties. 
The aged shall bear witness of you ; the young shall 
kindle with rapture as they repeat the name of Web- 
ster ; and the large company of the ransomed shall 
teach their children and their children's children to 
the latest generation, to call you blessed ; while all 
shall award you another title, not to be forgotten in 
earth or heaven — Defender of Humanity." 

But Webster had other aspirations. He wanted to 
be president of the United States, to be that he must 
please the South, and so instead of Defender of Hu- 
manity he turned to be a defender of kidnapping and 
of the fugitive slave law. 



sumner's rebuke of winthrop. 225 

In 1846, Sumner, in a public letter, rebuked Robert 
C. Winthrop, then a Massachusetts representative, for 
voting for the Mexican war. In this letter he charac- 
terizes the Mexican war as an unjust attack on a sister 
republic, having its origin in a system of measures to 
extend slavery ; as being dishonorable and cowardly, 
as being the attack of a rich and powerful country on 
a weak and defenceless neighbor ; and having thus 
characterized it, he adds : 

" Such, sir, is the act of Congress to which, by your 
affirmative vote, the people of Boston have been made 
parties. Through you they have been made to de- 
clare an unjust and cowardly war, with falsehood, in 
the cause of slavery. Through you they have been 
made partakers in the blockade of Vera Cruz, in the 
seizure of California, in the capture of Santa Fe, and 
in the bloodshed of Monterey. It were idle to sup- 
pose that the poor soldier or officer alone is stained 
by this guilt — it reaches back and incarnadines the 
halls of Congress ; nay, more, through you it reddens 
the hands of your constituents in Boston. 

****** 

"Let me ask you, sir, to remember in your public 
course the rules of right which you obey in your pri- 
vate capacity. The principles of morals are the same 
for nations as for individuals. Pardon me if I suggest 
that you do not appear to have acted invariably in 
accordance with this truth. 

****** 

"It has been said in apology by your defenders that 
the majority of the Whig party joined with you. * 

* * In the question of right and wrong it can 
15 



226 CHARLES SUMNER. 

be of little importance thafa few fallible men, consti- 
tuting what is called a majority, were all of one mind. 
But these majorities do not make us withhold our con- 
demnation from the partakers in those acts. Aloft on 
the throne of God, and not below in the footsteps of 
the trampling multitude of men, are to be found the 
sacred rules of right which no majorities can displace 
or overturn. And the question returns, Was it right 
to vote for an unjust and cowardly war, with false- 
hood, for slavery ? " 

These extracts will give a tolerable certainty that 
the old Whig party of Massachusetts, which was thor- 
oughly dead in the trespasses and sins of pro-slavery 
compromise, found Charles Sumner, with all his learn- 
ing, and vigor and talent, a rather uncomfortable 
member, and that he soon found that the Whig party 
was no place for him. 

In 1848 he left them to unite in forming the Free 
Soil party, in which the platform of principles he had 
already announced, was to form the distinctive basis. 

And now came the great battle of the Fugitive 
Slave Law. The sorceress slavery meditated a grand 
coup eT etat that should found a Southern slave em- 
pire, and shake off the troublesome North, and to that 
intent her agents concocted a statute so insulting to 
Northern honor, so needlessly offensive in its provi- 
sions, so derisive of what were understood to be its 
religious convictions and humane sentiments, that it 
was thought verily, "The North never will submit to 
this, and we shall make here the breaking point." 
Then arose Daniel Webster, that lost Archangel of 
New England — he who had won her confidence by his 



SUCCEEDS WEBSTER IN THE SENATE. 227 

knowledge of and reverence for all that was most sa- 
cred in her, and moved over to the side of evil ! It 
was as if a great constellation had changed sides in 
the heavens, drawing after it a third part of the stars. 
The North, perplexed, silenced, troubled, yielded for 
a moment. For a brief space all seemed to go down 
before that mighty influence, and all listened, as if 
spell bound, to the serpent voice with which he scoffed 
at the idea that there was a law of God higher than 
any law or constitution of the United States. 

But that moment of degradation was the last. Back 
came the healthy blood, the re-awakened pulse of 
moral feeling in New England, and there were found 
voices on all sides to speak for the right, and hearts 
to respond, and on this tide of re-awakened moral 
feeling, Sumner was carried into the United States 
Senate, to take the seat vacated by Webster. The 
right was not yet victorious, but the battle had turned 
so far that its champion had a place to stand on in the 
midst of the fray. 

And what a battle was that! What an ordeal! 
What a gauntlet to run was that of the man in Wash- 
ington who in those days set himself against the will 
of the great sorceress ! Plied with temptation on the 
right hand and on the left, studied, mapped out like a 
fortress to be attacked and taken, was every Northern 
man who entered the arena. Could he be bought, 
bribed, cajoled, flattered, terrified? Which, or all? 
So planned the conspirators in their secret conclaves. 

The gigantic Giddings — he who brought to the 
strife nerves toughened by backwoods toil, and front- 
ier fights with Indians — once said of this warfare : 



228 CHARLES SUMNER. 

"I've seen hard fighting with clubs and bullets ; I've 
seen men falling all around me ; but I tell you it takes 
more courage to stand up in one's seat in Congress 
and say the right thing, than to walk up to the can- 
non's mouth. There's no such courage as that of the 
anti-slavery men there." 

Now, Sumner's superb vitality, that hardy yeoman 
blood which his ancestors brought from England, stood 
him in excellent stead. His strong and active brain was 
based on a body muscular, vigorous, and healthy, inca- 
pable of nervous tremor, bearing him with a steady a- 
plornb through much that would be confusing and weak- 
ening to men of less physical force. Sumner had not the 
character of a ready debater ; not a light-armed skir- 
misher was he ; he resembled rather one of the mailed 
warriors of ancient tourney. When he had deliber- 
ately put on his armor, all polished and finished down 
to buckle and shoe-latchet, and engraved with what- 
not of classic, or Venetian, or Genoese device ; when he 
put down his visor, steadied his lance, took sure aim, 
and went man and horse against his antagonist, all 
went down before him, as went down all before the 
lance of Coeur-de-Lion. 

Such a charge into the enemy was his first great 
speech, " Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," which 
he directed against the Fugitive Slave Law. It was 
a perfect land-slide of history and argument ; an ava- 
lanche under which the opposing party were logically 
buried, and it has been a magazine from which cata- 
pults have been taken to beat down then fortresses 
ever since. 



THE CONSTITUTION A CHARTER OF LIBERTY. 229 

If Daniel Webster merited the title of the great 
expounder of the constitution, Sumner at this crisis 
merited that of the great defender of the constitution. 
In this speech we see clearly the principle on which 
Charles Sumner, while holding the same conscientious 
ground with Mr. Garrison in regard to the wickedness 
of slavery, could yet see his way clear to take the oath 
to support and defend the constitution of the United 
States. 

It was because he believed ex animo, that that 
constitution was an agreement made to promote and 
defend ld3Erty, and though including in itself certain 
defective compromises, which never ought to have 
been there, had yet within itself the constitutional 
power of revoking even those compromises, and com- 
ing over entirely on to the ground of liberty. 

The fugitive slave law, as it was called, he opposed 
on the ground that it was unconstitutional, that it was 
contrary to the spirit and intention of the constitution, 
and to the well known spirit and intention of the men 
who made that constitution. In this part, Mr. Sumner, 
going back to the history of the debates at the form- 
ation of the constitution, gave a masterly resume of 
the subject, showed that the leading men of those 
days were all strong anti-slavery men, that they all 
looked forward to the gradual dying out of slavery 
as certain, and that with great care they avoided in 
the constitution any legal recognition of such an un- 
lawful, unnatural relation. That the word slave did 
not exist in the document, and that when the slaves 
of the South were spoken of in relation to apportion- 
ing the suffrage, they were spoken of as "persons," 



230 CHARLES SUMNER. 

and not as chattels ; that even the very clause of the 
constitution which has been perverted into a founda- 
tion for the fugitive slave law, had been purposely so 
framed that it did not really describe the position of 
slaves under southern law, but only that of such la- 
borers as were by law denominated and recognized as 
persons. By slave law the slaves were not regarded 
as "persons held to service and labor," but as chattels 
personal, and it was only apprentices and free persons 
to whom the terms could literally be made to apply. 

He showed by abundant quotations from the debates 
of the times that this use of language was not acci- 
dental, but expressly designed to avoid corrupting the 
constitution of the United States with any recognition 
of the principle that man could hold man as property. 
He admitted that the makers of it knew and admitted 
that under it slaveholders could recover their slaves, 
but considering slaveholding as a temporary thing, 
they had arranged so that the language of their great 
national document should remain intact and uncorrupt. 
From this masterly speech we extract the concluding 
summary : 

"At the risk of repetition, but for the sake of clear- 
ness, review now this argument, and gather it togeth- 
er. Considering that slavery is of such an offensive 
character that it can find sanction only in positive law 
and that it has no such 'positive' sanction in the con- 
stitution ; that the constitution, according to its Pre- 
amble, was ordained to 'establish justice,' and 'secure 
the blessings of liberty ;' that in the convention which 
framed it, and also elsewhere at the time, it was de- 
clared not to 'sanction slavery;' that according to the 



SLAVERY NOT IN THE CONSTITUTION. 231 

Declaration of Independence, and the address of the 
Continental Congress, the nation was dedicated to 
'liberty' and the 'rights of human nature;' that ac- 
cording to the principles of common law, the consti- 
tution must be interpreted openly, actively, and per- 
petually for Freedom ; that according to the decision 
of the Supreme Court, it acts upon slaves, not as prop- 
erty, but as persons • that, at the first organization of 
the national government, under Washington, .slavery 
had no national favor, existed nowhere on the national 
territory, beneath the national flag, but was openly 
condemned by the nation, the church, the colleges 
and literature of the time ; and finally, that according 
to an amendment of the constitution, the national 
government can only exercise powers delegated to it, 
among which there is none to support slavery ; con- 
sidering these things, sir, it is impossible to avoid the 
single conclusion that slavery is in no respect a na- 
tional institution, and that the constitution nowhere 
upholds property in man. 

"But there is one other special provision of the con- 
stitution, which I have reserved to this stage, not so 
much from its superior importance, but because it may 
fitly stand by itself. This alone, if practically applied, 
would carry freedom to all within its influence. It is 
an amendment proposed by the first Congress, as fol- 
lows: 'No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or 
property, without due process of Jaw.' Under this 
a3gis the liberty of every person within the national 
jurisdiction is unequivocally placed. I say every per- 
son. Of this there can be no question. The word 
'person,' in the constitution, embraces every human 



232 CHARLES SUMNER. 

being within its sphere, whether Caucasian, Indian, 
or African, from the President to the slave." 

The moral influence of these doctrines on the political 
abolitionists was very great. Garrison's sharp, clear 
preaching of the Bible doctrine of sin and repentance, 
had awakened a great deal of moral feeling in the 
land, and it became a real case of conscience to a 
great many, how they could in any way take the oath 
to support a constitution which they thought support- 
ed slavery. On this subject, in all pure and noble 
minds, there began to be great searchings of heart, 
but the clearness, the fulness, the triumphant power with 
which Sumner and others brought out the true intention 
of the constitution, and the spirit of its makers, gave a 
feeling of clean and healthy vigor through the whole 
party. Even the Garrisonians could perceive at any 
rate, that here was a ground where honest Christians 
might plant their feet, and get a place in the govern- 
ment to fight on, until by the constitutional power of 
amendment they might some day cast out wholly the 
usurping devil of slavery, which had lived and thriven 
so much beyond the expectations of our fathers. 

Sumner's mind is particularly remarkable for a nice 
sense of moral honor. He had truly that which Burke 
calls "that chastity of honor which felt a stain like a 
wound," and he felt keenly the disgrace and shame of 
such an enactment as the fugitive slave law. He 
never spoke of it as a law. He was careful to call it 
only an enactment, an attempt at law, which being 
contrary to the constitution of the country, never 
could have the binding force of a law. 



THE KANSAS STRUGGLE. 233 

Next in the political world came the defeat, dis- 
grace, fall and broken hearted death of Webster, 
who, having bid for the Presidency, at the price 
of all his former convictions, and in the face of 
his former most solemnly expressed opinions, was treat- 
ed by the haughty Southern oligarchy with contemp- 
tuous neglect. " The South never pay their slaves," 
said a northern farmer when he heard that Webster 
had lost the nomination. Webster felt with keen 
pangs, that for that slippery ungrateful South, he had 
lost the true and noble heart of the North. In the 
grave with Webster died the old Whig party. 

But still, though this and that man died, and parties 
changed, the unflinching Southern power pushed on 
its charge. Webster being done with, it took up 
Douglas as its next tool, and by him brought on the 
repeal of the Missouri compromise and the Kansas and 
Nebraska battle. The war raged fiercer and hotter 
and in the fray, Sumner's voice was often heard cry- 
ing the war cry of liberty. 

And now the war raged deadlier, as came on the 
struggle for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, 
when the strokes of Sumner's battle axe, long and 
heavy, were heard above the din, and always with 
crushing execution. The speech on " The Crime 
against Kansas," wrought the furnace of wrath to a 
white heat. What was to be done with this man ? 
Call him out and fight him ? He was known to be on 
principle a non-resistant. Answer him? Indeed! who 
ever heard of such a proceeding ? How could they ? 
Had he not spoken the truth ? What shall we do then ? 
Plantation manners suggested an answer. " Come be- 



234 CHARLES SUMNER. 

hind him at an unguarded moment, take him at a dis- 
advantage, three to one, knock him down and kill 

him." 

So said — and but for his strong frame, wonderful in 
its recuperative power, and but for the unseen protec- 
tion of a higher power, — it would have been so done. 

Everybody knows the brutal history of that coarse 
and cowardly assault, and how the poor bully who ac- 
complished it was feted and caressed by Southern men 
and women in high places, who hastened by presents 
of canes, and snuff boxes, and plate, to show forth 
how well he had expressed the Southern idea of chiv- 
alry. 

Three or four years spent abroad, under medical 
treatment, were necessary to enable even Sumner's 
vigorous vitality to recover from an assault so deadly ; 
but at last he came back to take his seat in the Senate. 

The poor cowardly bully who had assailed him, was 
dead — gone to a higher judgment seat ; Butler was 
dead — and other accomplices of the foul deed were 
gone also. Under all these circumstances there is some- 
thing thrilling in the idea of Sumner rising in the very 
seat where he had been stricken down, and pronounc- 
ing that searching speech to which his very presence 
there gave such force, " The Barbarism of Slavery." 

If he had wished revenge he might have had it, in 
the fact that he had the solemn right, as one raised 
from the dead, to stand there and give in his awful tes- 
timony. How solemn and dignified, in view of all 
these circumstances, seem the introductory words of 
his speech: 



FIRST SPEECH AFTER BROOKS' ASSAULT. 235 

" Mr. President, undertaking now, after a silence of 
more than four years, to address the Senate on this im- 
portant subject, I should suppress the emotions natu- 
ral to such an occasion, if I did not declare on the 
threshold my gratitude to that Supreme Being, through 
whose benign care I am enabled, after much suffer- 
ing and many changes, once again to resume my duties 
here, and to speak for the cause which is so near my 
heart, to the honored commonwealth whose represen- 
tative I am, and also to my immediate associates in 
this body, with whom I enjoy the fellowship which is 
found in flunking alike concerning the Republic. I owe 
thanks which I seize this moment to express for the 
indulgence shown me throughout the protracted seclu- 
sion enjoined by medical skill ; and I trust that it will 
not be thought unbecoming in me to put on record 
here, as an apology for leaving my seat so long vacant, 
without making way, by resignation for a successor, 
that I acted under the illusion of an invalid, whose 
hopes for restoration to his natural health constantly 
triumphed over his disappointments. 

"When last I entered into this debate it became my 
duty to expose the crime against Kansas, and to insist 
upon the immediate admission of that Territory as a 
State of this Union, with a constitution forbidding sla- 
very. Time has passed, but the question remains. Re- 
suming the discussion precisely where I left it, I am 
happy to avow that rule of moderation which, it is 
said, may venture even to fix the boundaries of wis- 
dom itself. I have no personal griefs to utter ; only a 
barbarous egotism could intrude these into this cham- 
ber. I have no personal wrongs to avenge ; only a 



236 CHARLES SUMNER. 

barbarous nature could attempt to wield that vengeance 
which belongs to the Lord. The years that have in- 
tervened, and the tombs that have been opened since 
I spoke, have their voices too, which I cannot fail to 
hear. Besides, what am I — what is any man among 
the living or among the dead, compared with the 
Question before us ? It is this alone which I shall dis- 
cuss, and I open the argument with that easy victory 
which is found in charity." 

Though Sumner was thus moderate in allusion to 
himself or others, it was still the constant sugges- 
tion to the minds of all, of the perfect reason 7*e, of 
all men, had, to know the truth of what he spoke, that 
gave a vehement force to his words. That was a speech 
unanswerable, unanswered. The South had tried the 
argument of force, and it had failed ! There he was 
again ! — their accuser at the bar of the civilized world! 

In the present administration, as Chairman of the 
Committee on Foreign Relations, Sumner has with his 
usual learning and power defended American honor 
against the causeless defamations and sneers of those 
who should have known better. None of our public 
men, perhaps, is more favorably known in the Old 
World. His talents and accomplishments, as well as 
his heroic stand for principle, have given him the fa- 
miliar entree to all that is best worth knowing in Eng- 
land ; and it is for that reason more admirable that he 
should, with such wealth of learning and elegance of 
diction, have remonstrated with that great nation on 
her injustice to us. His pamphlet on " Our Foreign 
Relations " carries a weight of metal in it that is over- 
powering; it is as thoroughly exhaustive of the subject 



CONSISTENCY AS TO RECONSTRUCTION. 237 

as any of his greatest speeches, — grave, grand, and se- 
verely true. It is the strong blood of England her- 
self speaking back to the parent land as sorrowfully 
as Hamlet to his mother. 

In the recent debates on Reconstruction, Sumner has 
remained true to that "chastity of honor " in relation 
to the United States Constitution, which has been char- 
acteristic of him, in opposing that short sighted repub- 
lican policy which proposed to secure the political 
privileges of the blacks by introducing the constitu- 
tional amendment, providing that any state disfran- 
chising negroes should be deprived of a corresponding 
portion of its representation in Congress. 

Sumner indignantly repelled the suggestion of in- 
troducing any such amendments into the constitution, 
as working dishonor to that instrument by admitting 
into it, in any form, or under whatsoever pretext, the 
doctrine of the political inequality of races of men. 
In this we recognize a faultless consistency of principle. 

Sumner was cheered in the choice which he made 
in the darkest hour, by that elastic hope in the success 
of the right, which is the best inheritance of a strong, 
and healthy physical and moral organization. During 
the time of the Fugitive Slave Law battle, while the con- 
flict of his election was yet uncertain, he was speaking 
incidentally to a friend of the tremendous influences 
which the then regnant genius of Daniel Webster could 
bring to crush any young man who opposed him. He 
spoke with feeling of what had to be sacrificed by a 
Boston young man who set himself to oppose such in- 
fluences. The friend, in reply, expressed some admira- 
tion of his courage and self-sacrificing. He stopped, 



238 CHARLES SUMNER. 

as he was walking up and down the room, and said, 
with simplicity, "Courage! No, it doesn't require so 
very much courage, because I know that in a few years 
we shall have all this thing down under our feet. We 
shall set our heel upon it," and he emphasized the sen- 
tence by bringing his heel heavily down upon the car- 
pet. 

" Do you really think so ?" 

"I know so ; of course we shall." 

Those words, spoken in the darkest hour of the anti- 
slavery conflict, have often seemed like a prophecy, in 
view of all the fast rushing events of the years that 
followed. Now they are verified. Where is the man 
who counselled the North to conquer their prejudices ? 
Where is the man who raised a laugh in popular as- 
semblies at the expense of those who believed the law 
of God to be higher than the law of men ? There is a 
most striking lesson to young men in these histories. 

The grave of the brilliant and accomplished Doug- 
las lay far back on the road by which Lincoln rose to 
fame and honor, and the grave of Webster on that of 
Charles Sumner, and on both of those graves might be 
inscribed "Lo, this is the man that made not God his 
trust," Both scoffed at God's law, and proclaimed 
the doctrine of expediency as above right, and both 
died broken down and disappointed; while living 
and honored at this day, in this land and all lands, are 
the names of those, who in its darkest and weakest 
hour, espoused the cause of Liberty and Justice. 





E Oji * "by ; 




CHAPTER V. 
SALMON P. CHASE. 

England and our Finances in the War — President Wheelock and Mr. Chase's 
seven Uncles — His Uncle the Bishop — His sense of Justice at College — His 
Uncle the Senator — Admitted to the Bar for Cincinnati — His First Argument 
before a U. S. Court — Society in Cincinnati — The Ohio Abolitionists — Cincin- 
nati on Slavery — The Church admits Slavery to be "an Evil' 5 — Mr. Chase 
and the Bimey Mob — The Case of the Slave Girl Matilda — How Mr. Chase 
"Ruined Himself" — He Affirms the Sectionality of Slavery. — The Van Zandt 
Case — Extracts from Mr. Chase's Argument — Mr. Chase in Anti-Slavery Poli- 
tics — His Qualifications as a Financier. 

When a future generation shall be building the 
tombs of our present prophets, and adorning the halls 
of the Capitol with the busts of men now too hard at 
work to be sitting to the sculptor, then there will be 
among the marble throng one head not inferior to any 
now there in outside marks of greatness — a head to 
which our children shall point and say, "There is the 
financier who carried our country through the great 
slavery war!" 

Not a small thing that to say of any man ; for this 
war has been on a scale of magnitude before unheard 
of in the history of wars. It has been, so to speak, a 
fabulous war, a war of a tropical growth, a war to 
other wars, like the great Californian pine to the 
bramble of the forest. A thousand miles of frontier 

241 



242 SALMON P. CHASE. 

to be guarded, fleets to be created, an army to be or- 
ganized and constantly renewed on a scale of numbers 
beyond all European experience — an army, too, for 
the most part, of volunteer citizens accustomed to gen- 
erous diet, whose canfp fare has been kept at a mark 
not inferior to the average of living among citizens at 
home. And all this was to be effected in no common 
times. It was to be done amid the revolutions of busi- 
ness, the disturbances of trade and manufacture, then 
turning into new courses; and above all, the breaking 
up of the whole system of cotton agriculture, by 
which the greatest staple of the world was produced. 
These changes convulsed and disarranged financial 
relations in all other countries, and shook the civilized 
world like an earthquake. 

It is not to be wondered at that a merely insular 
paper, like the London Times, ignorant of all beyond 
the routine of British and continental probabilities, 
should have declared us madmen, and announced our 
speedy bankruptcy. We all know that paper to be 
conducted by the best of old world ability, and are 
ready to concede that the grave writers therein used 
their best light, and certainly they did their best to 
instruct us. How paternally did it warn us that we 
must not look to John Bull for funds to carry out such 
extravagances ! How ostentatiously did the old bank- 
ing houses stand buttoning their pockets, saying, 
"Don't come to us to borrow money!" and how did 
the wonder grow when the sun rose and set, and still 
new levies, new fleets, new armies ! — when hundreds of 
thousands grew to millions, and still there was no call 



PRESIDENT WHEELOCK AND CHASE'S UNCLES. 243 

for foreign money, and government stocks stood in the 
market above all others in stability. 

One thing, at least, became plain ; that whatever might 
be the case with the army, financially the American peo- 
ple had a leader who united them to a man, and under 
whose guidance the vast material resources of the 
country moved in solid phalanx to support its needs. 

When a blade does good service, nothing is more 
natural than to turn and read upon it the stamp that 
tells where and by whom it was fashioned ; and so 
when we see the quiet and serenity in which our 
country moved on under its burdens, we ask, Whence 
comes this man who has carried us so smoothly in such 
a storm? 

America is before all other things an agricultural 
country, and her aristocracy, whether of talent or 
wealth, generally trace back their origin to a farm. 
The case of Secretary Chase is no exception. 

It is one of the traditions of Dartmouth College 
that old President Wheelock, in one of his peregrina- 
tions, once stopped in the town of Cornish, N. H. ; a 
place where the Connecticut river flows out from the 
embrace of the White Mountains. Here he passed a 
night at a farm-house, the dwelling of Samuel Chase, 
a patriarchal farmer, surrounded by seven sons, as 
fine, strong and intelligent as those of Jesse of Old 
Testament renown. The President used his visit to 
plead the cause of a college education for these fine 
youths to such good purpose, that five of the boys, 
to wit : Salmon, Baruch, Heber, Dudley and Philander 
became graduates of Dartmouth College. Two re- 
16 



244 SALMON P. CHASE. 

mained to share the labors of the farm, one of whom 
was the father of Secretary Chase. 

All the boys thus educated attained more than the 
average mark in society, and some to the highest dis- 
tinction. Dudley Chase was one of the most distin- 
guished lawyers and politicians of New England — a 
member of the United States Senate, and for many 
years Chief Justice of Vermont. It is said that he 
was so enthusiastic a' classical scholar that he carried a 
Greek Homer and Demosthenes always in his pocket, 
for his recreation in intervals of public business. He 
lived to a patriarchal age, an object of universal ven- 
eration. 

Salmon Chase, another brother, was a lawyer in 
Portland, the acknowledged leader of that distin- 
guished bar. He died suddenly, while pleading in 
court, in 1806, and in memorial of him our Secretary 
received the name of Salmon Portland, at his birth, 
which occurred in 1808. The youngest of the grad- 
uates, Philander Chase, was the well-known Episcopal 
Bishop of Ohio and Illinois. He was the guardian 
under whose auspices the education of Salmon P. 
Chase was conducted. 

In regard to Chase's early education, we have not 
many traditions. His parents were of the best class 
of New Hampshire farmers ; Bible-reading, thought- 
ful, shrewd, closely and wisely economical. It is said 
that in that region literary material was so scarce that 
the boy's first writing lessons were taken on strips of 
birch bark. 

When his father died, there was found to be little 
property for the support of the family, and only the 



HIS UNCLE AND THE BISHOP. 245 

small separate estate of his mother was left. She was 
of Scotch blood — that blood which is at once shrewd, 
pious, courageous and energetic, and was competent 
to make a little serve the uses of a great deal. 

But an education, and a college education, is the 
goal towards which such mothers in New England set 
their faces as a flint — and by infinite savings and un- 
known economies they compass it. 

When Chase was fourteen years old, his uncle, the 
Bishop, offered to take and educate him, and he went 
to Ohio along with an elder brother who was attached 
to Gen. Cass's expedition to the upper waters of the 
Mississippi. 

While at Buffalo the seniors of the party made an 
excursion to Niagara, but had no room in their vehicle 
for the boy. Young Chase, upon this, with character- 
istic energy, picked up another boy who wanted to 
see the falls, and the two enterprising young gentle- 
men footed it through the snow for twenty miles, and 
saw the falls in company with their elders. 

He remained two years with the Bishop, who was a 
peremptory man, and used his nephew as he did him- 
self and everybody else about him, that is, made him 
work just as hard as he could. 

The great missionary Bishop had so much to do, 
and so little to do it with, that he had to make up for 
lack of money by incessant and severe labor, and with 
such help as he could get. His nephew being his 
own flesh and blood, he felt perhaps at liberty to drive 
a little more sharply than the rest, as that is the form 
in which the family instinct shows itself in people of 
his character. 



24 G SALMON P. CHASE. 

The Bishop supplemented his own scanty salary by 
teaching school and working a farm, and so Salmon's 
preparatory studies were seasoned with an abundance 
of severe labor. 

The youth was near sighted, and troubled with an 
obstinate lisp. The former disability was incurable, 
but the latter he overcame by means of a long and 
persevering course of reading aloud. 

On the whole, the Bishop seems to have thought 
well of his nephew, for one day in refusing him leave 
to go in swimming, he did so with the complimentary 
exclamation, "Why, Salmon, the country might lose 
its future President, were I to let you get drowned." 

After being fitted under his uncle, Chase entered 
Dartmouth College. 

One anecdote of Chase's college life is characteris- 
tic, as showing that courageous and steady sense of 
justice which formed a leading feature of his after life. 
One of his classmates was sentenced by the faculty to 
be expelled from college on a charge of which Chase 
knew him to be wholly innocent. Chase, after in vain 
arguing the case with the president, finally told him 
that he would go too, as he would not stay in an insti- 
tution where his friends were treated with such injustice. 
The two youths packed up their goods and drove off. 
But the faculty sent word after them almost before 
they had got out of the village, that the sentence was 
rescinded and they might come back. They said, 
however, that they must take time to consider whether 
they would do so, and they took a week, having a 
pleasant vacation, after which they returned. 



MR. chase's uncle the senator. 247 

After graduating, Mr. Chase found himself depend- 
ent on his own exertions to procure his support in his 
law studies. He went to Washington intending to 
open a private school. He waited in vain for scholars 
till his money was gone, and then, feeling discouraged, 
asked his uncle the Senator to get him an office under 
government. 

The old gentleman, who seems to have been about 
as stern in his manner of expressing family affection 
as his brother the Bishop, promptly refused: 

" I'll give you half a dollar to buy you a spade to be- 
gin with," he said, "for then you might come to some- 
thing at last, but once settle a young man down in a 
government office, he never does any thing more — it's 
the last you hear of him. I've ruined one or two 
young men in that way, and I'm not going to ruin you." 

Thus with stern kindness was Chase turned off from 
what might have made a contented common-place man 
of him, and pricked up to the career which gave us a 
Secretary of the Treasury and a Chief Justice of the 
United States. He succeeded at last in obtaining the 
ownership of a select classical school already estab- 
lished, while he pursued his legal studies under the 
auspices of Wirt. 

In 1830 he was examined for admission to the bar. 
At the close of the examination he was told that he 
had better read for another year. He replied that he 
could not do that, as he was all ready to commence 
practice in Cincinnati. 

" Oh, at Cincinnati!" replied the Judge, as if any 
law or no law was enough for such a backwoods set- 
tlement — "well then, Mr. Clerk, swear in Mr. Chase." 



248 SALMON P. CHASE. 

His early days of legal practice, like those of most 
young lawyers, were days of waiting and poverty. 
The only professional work he did for a considerable 
time was to draw an agreement for a man, who paid 
him half a dollar, and a week afterwards came and bor- 
rowed it back. In one of his early cases he had occa- 
sion to prove the bad character of a witness who was 
on the other side, on which the fellow, who was a well 
known rough, threatened to " have his blood," and 
undertook to assault him. But as the rowdy came up 
at the close of the court, he met so quiet and stern 
a look from Mr. Chase's eyes that he turned and 
sneaked off without opening his mouth or raising his 
hand. 

Mr. Chase's first argument before a United States 
Court was at Columbus, 0., in 1834. The case was to 
him a very important one, and when he arose to make 
his argument he found himself so agitated that he 
could not utter a word. He had therefore to sit down, 
and after waiting a few moments, tried again, and 
made his plea. After he was through, one of the 
Judges came to him and shook hands with him, say- 
ing, "I congratulate you most sincerely." Chase, who 
was feeling very disagreeably, inquired with surprise 
what he was congratulated for ? 

" On your failure," answered the judge, who added, 
" A person of ordinary temperament and abilities 
would have gone through his part without any such 
symptoms of nervousness. But when I see a young 
man break down once or twice in that way, I conceive 
the highest hopes of him." 



SOCIETY IN CINCINNATI. 249 

This may have been interpreted as a good natured 
attempt on the part of the Judge to reassure the young 
lawyer, but there is a deep and just philosophy in it 
The class of men who have what Carlye calls "a com- 
posed stupidity, or a cheerful infinitude of igno- 
rance," are not liable ever to break down through a 
high sense of the magnitude of their task, and the im- 
portance of a crisis. Such as their work is, they are 
always in a prepared frame of mind to do it. 

Although the Washington judge who passed Mr. 
Chase into the legal profession had so small an opinion 
of Cincinnati, yet no place could have afforded a finer 
and more agreeable position to arising young man, than 
that city in those days. A newly settled place, having 
yet lingering about it some of the wholesome neighborly 
spirit of a recent colony — with an eclectic society drawn 
from the finest and best cultivated classes of each of 
the older States, there was in the general tone of life 
a breadth of ideas, a liberality and freedom, which 
came from the consorting together of persons of dif- 
ferent habits of living. 

In no city was real intellectual or moral worth in a 
young candidate likely to meet a quicker and a more 
appreciative patronage. 

Gradually Mr. Chase gained the familiar entree of all 
that was worth knowing, and was received with hos- 
pitable openness in the best society. His fine person, 
his vigorous, energetic appearance, and the record of 
talent and scholarship he brought with him, secured 
him, in time the patronage of the best families, and a 
valuable and extensive practice. His industry was in- 
cessant, and his capability of sustained labor uncom- 



250 SALMON P. CHASE. 

inon, as may be gathered from the fact that besides the 
labors of his office, he found time to prepare an edi- 
tion of the Statutes of Ohio, with notes, and a history 
of the State, which is now a standard authority in the 
Ohio courts. 

In the outset of Chase's career, he, like Charles Sum- 
ner, and every rising young American of his time, met 
the great test question of the age. To Chase it came 
in the form of an application to plead the cause of a 
poor black woman, claimed as a fugitive slave. For a 
rising young lawyer to take in hand the cause of a poor 
black, now, would be only a road to popularity and 
fame. But then the case was far otherwise. 

If the abolition excitement had stirred up Boston it 
had convulsed Cincinnati. A city separated from slave 
territory only by a fordable river, was likely to be no 
quiet theatre for such discussions. All the horrors, all 
the mean frauds and shocking cruelties of the inter- 
state slave-trade, were enacting daily on the steamboats 
which passed before the city on the Ohio River, and 
the chained .gangs of broken-hearted human beings, 
torn from home and family, to be shipped to Southern 
plantations, were often to be seen on steamboats lying 
at the levee. 

The chapter in Uncle Tom's Cabin called "Select Inci- 
dents of Lawful Trade" was no fancy painting. It was 
an almost literal daguerreotype of scenes which the au- 
thor of that book had witnessed in those floating palaces 
which plied between Cincinnati and New Orleans, and 
where too, above in the cabin, were happy mothers, wives, 
husbands, brothers and sisters, rejoicing in secure fam- 
ily affection, and on the deck below, miserable shat- 



THE OHIO ABOLITIONISTS. 251 

tered fragments of black families, wives torn from hus- 
bands, children without mothers and mothers without 
children, with poor dumb anxious faces going they 
knew not whither, to that awful "down river" — whence 
could come back letter or tidings never more — for sla- 
very took care that slaves should write no letters. 

Such scenes as these, almost daily witnessed, gave 
the discussion of the great question of slavery a start- 
ling and tangible reality which it never could have 
had in Boston. For the credit of human nature we 
are happy to state that the Ohio was lined all along its 
shores, where it ran between free and slave territory, 
with a chain of abolitionist forts, in the shape of soci- 
eties prosecuting their object with heroic vigor ; and 
what made the controversy most peculiarly intense 
was the assistance which these abolitionists stood al- 
ways ready to give to the escaping fugitive. For a 
belt of as much as fifty miles all along the river, the 
exertions of the abolitionists made slave property the 
most insecure of all kinds of possessions. 

The slave power, as we have seen, was no meek 
non-resistant, and between it and the abolitionists 
there was a hand-to-hand grapple, with a short knife, 
and deadly home thrusts. The western man is in all 
things outspoken and ardent ; and Garrison's logical 
deductions as to the true nature of slavery came mol- 
ten and red hot, as fired from the guns of western ab- 
olitionists. To do them justice, they were sublimely 
and awfully imprudent, heroically regardless of any 
considerations but those of abstract truth and justice ; 
they made no more effort to palliate slavery or concil- 
iate the slaveholders than the slaveholders made efforts 



252 SALMON P. CHASE. 

to palliate their doings, or conciliate them. War, war 
to the knife, was the word on both sides, the only 
difference being that the knife of the abolitionist was 
a spiritual one, and the knife of the slaveholders a lit- 
eral one. 

The Lane Theological Seminary was taken posses- 
sion of as an anti-slavery fortification by a class of 
about twenty vigorous, radical young men, headed 
by that brilliant, eccentric genius, Theodore D. 
Weld; who came and stationed themselves there osten- 
sibly as theological students under Dr. Beecher and 
Professor Stowe, really that they might make of the 
Seminary an anti-slavery fort. 

Now at this time, "good society," so called, as consti- 
tuted in Cincinnati, had all that easy, comfortable in- 
difference to the fortunes and sufferings of people not 
so well off as itself, which is characteristic of good soci- 
ety all the world over. It is so much easier to refine 
upon one's own ideal of life, to carpet one's floors, and 
list one's doors and windows and keep out the cold, 
stormy wind of debate and discussion, than it is to go 
out into the highways and hedges and keep company 
with the never-ending sins and miseries and misfor- 
tunes and mistakes of poor, heavy-laden humanity, 
that good society always has sat as a dead weight on 
any rising attempt at reform. 

Then again, Cincinnati was herself to a large ex- 
tent a slaveholding city. Her property was in slave- 
holding states. Negroes were negotiable currency; 
they were collateral security on half the contracts 
that were at the time being made between the thriv- 
ing men of Cincinnati and the planters of the adjoin- 



CINCINNATI ON SLAVERY. 253 

ing slave states. If the bold doctrine of the aboli- 
tionists was true — if slavery was stealing, then were 
the church members in the fairest Cincinnati churches 
thieves — for in one way or another, they were to a 
large extent often the holders of slaves. 

The whole secret instinct of Cincinnati, therefore, 
was to wish that slavery might in some way be defend- 
ed, because Cincinnati stood so connected with it in 
the way of trade, that conscientious scruples on this 
point were infinitely and intolerably disagreeable. 
The whirlwind zeal of the abolitionists, the utter, reck- 
less abandon and carelessness of forms and fashions 
with which they threw themselves into the fight, there- 
fore furnished to good society a cloak large and long, 
for all their own sins of neglect. They did not defend 
slavery, of course, these good people — in fact, they 
regarded it as an evil. They were properly and dec- 
orously religious — good society always is, and so wil- 
ling in presbytery and synod to have judiciously 
worded resolutions from time to time introduced, re- 
gretting slavery as an evil. The meetings of eccle- 
siastical bodies afforded at this time examples of most 
dexterous theological hair-splitting on this subject. 
Invariably in every one of them, were the abolitionists 
forward and fiery, calling slavery by that ugly old 
Saxon word, "a sin." Then there were the larger 
class of brethren, longing for peace, and hating in- 
iquity, who had sympathy for the inevitable difficulties 
which beset well-meaning Christian slaveholders un- 
der slave laws. Now if these consented to call slavery a 
sin, they imposed on themselves the necessity of either 
enforcing immediate repentance and change of life 



254 SALMON P. CHASE. 

on the sinner, or excluding him from the communion. 
So they obstinately intrenched themselves in the dec- 
laration that slavery is — an evil. 

When a synod had spent all its spare time in dis- 
cussing "whether slavery ought to be described in a res- 
olution as an evil or as a moral evil, they thought they 
had about done their share of duty on the subject ; 
meanwhile, between the two, the consciences of those 
elders and church members who were holding slaves on 
bond and mortgage, or sending down orders to sell up 
the hands of plantations as securities for their debts, 
had a certain troublous peace. 

How lucky it was for these poor tempest-tossed 
souls that the abolitionists were so imprudent and hot 
headed, that they wore garments of camel's hair, and 
were girt about the loins with a leathern girdle, and 
did eat locusts and wild honey, being altogether an 
unpresentable, shaggy, unkempt, impracticable set of 
John the Baptist reformers. Their unchristian spirit 
shocked the nerves of good pious people far more 
than the tearing up of slave families, or the wholesale 
injustice of slavery. " The abolitionists do things in 
such bad taste," said good society, " that it really makes 
it impossible for us to touch the subject at all, lest we 
should become mixed up with them, and responsible 
for their proceedings." To become mixed up with and 
responsible for the proceedings of slaveholders, slave- 
traders, and slave-drivers, who certainly exhibited no 
more evidences of good taste in their manner of hand- 
ling subjects, did not somehow strike good society at 
this time as equally objectionable. 



MR. CHASE IN THE BIRNEY MOB. 255 

It had got to be a' settled and received doctrine that 
the impudent abolitionists had created such a state of 
irritation in the delicate nerves of the slaveholding 
power, that all good Christian people were bound to 
unite in a general effort to calm irritation by suppress- 
ing all discussion of the subject. 

"When, therefore, James G. Birney, a southern abo- 
litionist, who had earned a right to be heard, by first 
setting free his own slaves, came to Cincinnati and set 
up an abolition paper, there was a boiling over of 
the slaveholding fury. For more than a week Cincin- 
nati lay helpless in a state of semi-sack and siege, trod 
under the heels of a mob led by Kentucky bullies and 
slave-traders. They sacked Birney's anti-slavery office, 
broke up his printing press and threw the types into 
the river, and then proceeded to burn negro houses, 
and to beat and maltreat defenceless women and chil- 
dren, after the manner of such evil beasts generally. 

At the time the mob were busy destroying the 
printing press, Mr. Chase threw himself in among 
them with a view to observe, and if possible to ob- 
struct their proceedings. 

He gathered from their threats while the process of 
sacking the office was going on, that their next attack 
would be on the life of Mr. Birney. On hearing this, 
he hastened before them to Mr. Birney's hotel, and 
stood in the door-way to meet them when they came 
up. 

No test of personal courage or manliness is greater 
than thus daring to stand and oppose a mob in the 
full flush of lawless triumph. Mr. Chase had a fine 
commanding person, and perfect courage and coolness, 



256 SALMON P. CHASE. 

and he succeeded in keeping back the mob, by argu- 
ing with them against lawless acts of violence to per- 
sons or property, until Birney had had time to escape. 

The upper ten of Cincinnati, when tranquility was 
once more restored to that community, were of course 
very much shocked and scandalized by the proceedings 
of the mob, but continued to assert that all these do- 
ings were the fault of the abolitionists. What could 
be expected if they would continue discussions which 
made our brethren across the river so uncomfortable ? 
If nobody would defend the rights of negroes there 
would be no more negro mobs, and good society be- 
came increasingly set in the belief that speaking for 
the slave in any way whatever was actually to join the 
abolitionists, and to become in fact a radical, a disor- 
ganize^ a maker of riots and disturbances. 

No young lawyer who acted merely from humane 
sentiment, or common good natured sympathy, would 
have dared at that time to plead a slave's cause against 
a master's claim. Then and always there were a plen- 
ty of people to feel instinctive compassion, and in fact 
slily to give a hunted fugitive a lift, if sure not to lose 
by it— r-but to take up and plead professionally a slave's 
cause against a master was a thing which no young 
man could do without making up his mind to be count- 
ed as one of the abolitionists, and to take upon his 
shoulders the whole responsibility of being identified 
with them. 

Mr. Chase was a man particularly alive to the value 
of all the things which he put in peril by such a 
step. He had a remarkable share of what is called 
the " Yankee " nature, which values and appreciates 



HOW MR. CHASE "RUINED HIMSELF." 257 

material good. He had begun poor, and he knew ex- 
actly what a hard thing poverty was. He had begun 
at the bottom of the social ladder, and he knew exactly 
how hard it was to climb to a good position. He had 
just got such a position, and he truly appreciated it. 
His best patrons and warmest friends now, with earnest- 
ness warned him not to listen to the voice of his 
feelings, and take that course which would iden- 
tify him with the fanatical abolitionists. They told him 
that it would be social and political death to him to 
take a step in that direction. 

For all that, when the case of the slave girl Matilda 
was brought to his door he defended it deliberately, 
earnestly and with all his might. Of course it was de- 
cided against him, as in those days, such cases were sure 
to be. 

As Chase left the court room after making his plea 
in this case, a man looked after him and said, " There 
goes a fine young fellow who has just ruined himself." 
Listening, however, to this very speech was a public 
man of great ability whose efforts afterwards went a 
long way towards making Chase United States Senator; 
and to-day we see that same young lawyer on the 
bench, Chief Justice of the United States. 

The decision of Chase in this matter was not merely 
from the temporary impulse of kindly feelings, but 
from a deep political insight into the tendencies and 
workings of the great slave power. His large, sound, 
logical brain saw in the future history of that power 
all that it has since brought to light. He saw that 
the exorbitant spirit of its exactions was directed 



258 SALMON P. CHASE. 

against the liberties of the free States and the princi- 
ples on which free government is founded. 

The plea of Chase, in- this case, was the first legal 
break-water in Ohio to the flood of usurpation and dic- 
tation which has characterized the slaveocracy from 
its commencement In this plea he took a ground 
then unheard of, to wit : That the phrase in the Con- 
stitution which demanded the giving up of fugitives 
to service on demand of masters, did not impose on 
the magistrates of the free States the responsibility of 
catching and returning slaves. He denied that Con- 
gress had any right to impose any such duties on 
State magistrates, or to employ State resources in any 
way for this purpose. This principle was afterwards 
recognized by the United States in the slave law of 
1850, by appointing special United States Commis- 
sioners for the conducting of such cases. 

From the time of this plea many of the former pat- 
rons and friends of the rising young lawyer walked 
no more with him ; but he had taken his ground like 
a strong man armed, and felt well able to keep his 
fortress single handed till recruits should gather around 
him. 

He was soon called on to defend James G. Birney 
for the crime of sheltering a fugitive slave. In this 
plea he asserted the great principle afterwards affirmed 
by Charles Sumner in Congress, that slavery is sec- 
tional and freedom national. As slavery was but a 
local institution, he claimed that it ceased when the 
slave was brought by his master to a free State. This 
assertion caused great excitement in a community 
separated from a slave State only by the Ohio, where 



THE VAN ZANDT CASE. 259 

slave masters were constantly finding it convenient to 
cross with their slaves, or to send them across, to the 
neighboring city. Of course the decision went against 
him. What judge who had any hopes of the presi- 
dency, or the Supreme Bench, would dare offend his 
southern masters by any other ? 

In 1846 came on the great Van Zandt case. Van 
Zandt was originally a thriving Kentucky farmer and 
slave owner. He figured in Uncle Tom's Cabin under 
the name of Yan Tromp. He was a man who, under 
a shaggy exterior, had a great, kind, honest heart, and 
in that day, when ministers and elders were studying 
the Bible to find apologies for slavery, Van Zandt 
needed no other light than that of this same heart to 
teach him that it was vile and devilish, and so, settipg 
his slaves free, he came over and bought a farm in the 
neighborhood of Cincinnati ; and it was well known 
that no hungry, wandering fugitive was ever turned 
from Van Zandt' s door. The writer has still memory 
of the wild night ride of husband and brother through 
woods, and over swelled creeks dangerous enough to 
cross, which carried a poor, hunted slave girl to this 
safe retreat. But Van Zandt was at last found out, 
and the slaveocrats brought -suit against him. Chase 
and Seward defended him, and made noble pleas — 
pleas as much for the rights of the whites as of the 
blacks. Of course, like all cases of the kind at that 
date, the judgment had been pre-ordained before the 
court sat. Chase's elaborate and unanswerable argu- 
ment before the United States Court, was afterward 
printed in a pamphlet of some three hundred and fifty 
octavo pages. 



2*60 SALMON P. CHASE. 

The opening of this great plea and its close we shall 
quote as best showing the solemn and earnest spirit 
in which this young lawyer entered upon his work. 
"Me. Chief Justice and Judges: 

I beg leave to submit to your consideration an argu- 
ment in behalf of an old man, who is charged, under 
the act of Congress of February 12, 1793, with hav- 
ing concealed and harbored a fugitive slave. 

Oppressed, and well nigh borne down by the pain- 
ful consciousness, that the principles and positions 
which it will be my duty to maintain, can derive no 
credit whatever from the reputation of the advocate, I 
have spared no pains in gathering around them whatev- 
er of authority and argument the most careful research 
and the most deliberate reflection could supply. I 
have sought instruction wherever I could find it ; I 
have looked into the reported decisions of almost 
all the state courts, and of this court ; I have ex- 
amined and compared state legislation and federal; 
above all, I have consulted the constitution of the 
Union, and the history of its formation and adoption. 
I have done this, because I am well assured, that the 
issues, now presented to this court for solemn adjudi- 
cation, reach to whatever is dear in constitutional 
liberty, and what is precious in political union. Not 
John Van Zandt alone — not numerous individuals only 
— but the States also, and the Nation itself, must be 
deeply affected by the decision to be pronounced in 
this case." 

Then followed the technical and legal plea which 
is a most close and unanswerable legal argument, show- 



THE VAN ZANDT CASE. 261 

ing conclusively that under the words of the statute 
the defendant could not be held guilty. 

After this, follows a clear and masterly argument on 
the unconstitutionality of the then existing fugitive 
slave law, of 1793. In this, Chase took with great 
skill, boldness, ingenuity and learning, the same 
course afterwards taken by Sumner in his great speech 
before Congress, on the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. 

The conclusion is solemn and weighty — and in the 
light of recent events has even a prophetic power : 

"Upon questions, — such as are some of those involved 
in this case, — which partake largely of a moral and po- 
litical nature, the judgment, even of this Court, can- 
not be regarded as altogether final. The decision, to 
be made here, must, necessarily, be rejudged at the 
tribunal of public opinion — the opinion, not of the 
American People only, but of the Civilized World. 
At home, as is well known, a growing disaffection to 
the Constitution prevails, founded upon its supposed al- 
lowance and support of Human Slavery ; abroad, the 
national character suffers under the same reproach. I 
most earnestly hope, and, — I trust it may not be 
deemed too serious to add, — I most earnestly pray, that 
the judgment of your honors in this case, may com- 
mend itself to the reason and conscience of Mankind ; 
that it may rescue the Constitution from the undeserv- 
ed opprobrium of lending its sanction to the idea that 
there may be property in men; that it may gath- 
er around that venerable charter of Republican Gov- 
ernment the renewed affection and confidence of a 
generous People ; and that it may win for American 
Institutions the warm admiration and profound horn- 



262 SALMON P. CHASE. 

age of all, who, everywhere, love Liberty and revere 
Justice." 

The question was decided as all such cases in those 
times invariably were decided. 

The Judge never undertook even the form of an- 
swering the argument ; never even adverted to it, but 
decided directly over it, with a composure worthy of a 
despotism. It was a decision only equalled by that of 
the most corrupt judges of the corrupt age of Charles 
II. 

Honest Van Zandt was ruined, "scot and lot," by a 
fine so heavy that all he had in the world would not 
pay it, and he died broken-hearted ; a solemn warn- 
ing to all in his day, how they allowed themselves to 
practise Christian charity in a way disagreeable to the 
plantation despots. 

As for Chase, he was undiscouraged by ill success, 
and shortly reaffirmed his argument and principles in 
the case of Driskull vs. Parish. He was at least edu- 
cating the community ; he was laying foundations of 
resistance on which walls and towers should by-and-by 
arise. Humanity and religion had already made the 
abolitionists numerically a large and active body in 
Ohio. They needed only a leader like Chase, of large 
organizing brain and solid force of combination, to shape 
them into a political party of great efficiency. To this 
end his efforts were henceforth directed. In 1841, he 
united in a call for an Anti- Slavery Convention in Co- 
lumbus, and in this convention was organized the Lib- 
erty party of Ohio. In 1845 he projected a South- 
western Anti-Slavery Convention. 



MR. CHASE IN ANTI-SLAVERY POLITICS. 263 

The ground taken was substantially that to which a 
bloody, weary experience has brought the whole na- 
tion now, to wit : " That whatever is worth preserving 
in republicanism can be maintained only by uncom- 
promising war against an usurping slave-power, and 
that all who wish to save the nation must unite in 
using all constitutional measures for the extinction of 
slavery in their own States, and the reduction of it to 
constitutional limits in the United States. 

This convention met in Cincinnati, in 1845, and 
Chase prepared the address, giving the history of 
slavery thus far, and showing the condition of the 
Whig and Democratic parties respecting it ; and urg- 
ing the importance of a political combination une- 
quivocally committed to the denationalizing of slavery 
and the slave power. So vigorous were the tactics of 
this party, so strongly moving with the great central 
currents of God's forward providences, that in 1847 
Chase was made Governor of Ohio, by the triumph of 
those very principles which in the outset threatened 
utter loss to their advocate. In 1847 he attended a 
second Liberty Convention ; and afterwards took part 
in the Buffalo Convention, the celebrated Buffalo Plat- 
form being mainly his work. 

In 1849, he was chosen United States Senator from 
Ohio, and his presence was hailed as a tower of strength 
to the hard fighting anti-slavery party at Washington. 
When, directly after the passage of the Fugitive Slave 
Law, the Democratic party in Ohio voted for Pierce, 
knowing him directly committed to its enforcement, 
Chase withdrew from it, and addressed a letter to B. 
F. Butler, of New York, recommending the formation 



264 SALMON P. CHASE. 

of an Independent Democratic party. He prepared 
a platform for this purpose, which was substantially 
adopted by the convention of the Independent Dem- 
ocracy of 1852. 

And now came on the battle of Kansas and Nebras- 
ka. Chase was one of the first to awaken the people 
to this new danger. He, in conference with the anti- 
slavery men of Congress, drafted an address to the 
people to arouse them as to this sudden and appalling 
conspiracy, which was intended to seize for slavery all 
the unoccupied land of the United States, and turn 
the balance of power and numbers forever into the 
slaveholders' hands. It was a critical moment ; there 
was but little time to spare ; but the whole united 
clergy of New England, of all denominations, Catholic 
and Protestant, found leisure to send in their solemn 
protest. When that nefarious bill passed, Chase pro- 
tested against it on the. night of its passage, as, with 
threats, and oaths, and curses, it was driven through. 
It seems in the retrospect but a brief passage from 
that hour of apparent defeat to the hour which beheld 
Lincoln in the presidential chair and Chase, Secretary 
of the Treasury. His history in that position has ver- 
ified the sagacity that placed him there. It has been 
the success of a large, sound, organizing brain, apt 
and skillful in any direction in which it should turn its 
powers. It was the well-known thrift and shrewdness 
of the Yankee farmer, thrift and shrewdness cultivated 
in years of stern wrestling with life, coming out at the 
head of the United States treasury in a most critical 
hour. No men are better to steer through exigencies 
than these same Yankee farmers, and it seems the sa- 



QUALIFICATIONS AS A FINANCIER. 265 

vor of this faculty goes to the second arid third gene- 
rations. 

We have said before, that if Chase made sacrifices 
of tangible and material present values for abstract 
principles, in his early days, it was not because, as is 
sometimes the case, he was a man merely of ideas, 
and destitute of practical faculties. On the contrary, 
the shrewd, cautious, managing, self-preserving facul- 
ties were possessed by him to a degree which caused 
him to be often spoken of by the familiar proverb, 
"a man who can make every edge cut." By nature, 
by descent, by hard and severe training, he was a 
rigid economist, and a man who might always safely 
be trusted to make the very most and best of a given 
amount of property. 

It is praise enough to any financier who could take 
a nation in the sudden and unprepared state ours was, 
and could carry it along for three or four years through 
a war of such gigantic expenditure, to say that the coun- 
try was neither ruined, beggared, nor hopelessly embar- 
rassed, but standing even stronger when he resigned 
the treasury than when he took it. 

His financial management was at first to raise the 
money needed for the war by loans, until the expen- 
ses became so great as to be beyond the capacity of 
the specie in the country. Then, still adhering to the 
principle of raising the means for the war within the 
United States, he introduced the legal tender paper 
currency, and by providing that it should be a necessa- 
ry basis for banking operations, he shrewdly placed the 
whole banking capital of the United States in a position 
where it must live or die with the country. This not 



266 SALMON P. CHASE. 

only provided funds, but made every dollar of money 
act as a direct stimulus to the patriotism of those who 
supplied it. 

On June 30, 1864, Chase resigned his position in 
the treasury. That Providence which has ordained so 
many striking and peculiar instances of victory and 
reward for men who espoused the cause of humanity 
in its dark hours, had also one for Chase. 

Oct, 12, 1864, by the death of Taney, the Chief 
Justiceship of the United States Supreme Court be- 
came vacant, and Lincoln expressed the sense of the 
whole American people in calling Chase to fill that ven- 
erable office. 

The young lawyer, who without name or prestige, 
dared to put in pleas for the poorest of his brethren, 
when the slave power was highest and haughtiest, and 
whose pleas were overruled with the most chilling 
contempt, now by God's providence holds that su- 
preme position on the national bench from which, let 
us trust, the oppressor and the tyrant have faded away 
forever ! 




^^^4, 



CHAPTER VI. 

HENRY WILSON. 

Lincoln, Chase and "Wilson as Illustrations of Democracy — Wilson's Birth and 
Boyhood — Reads over One Thousand Books in Ten Years — Learns Shoemak- 
ing — Earns an Education Twice Over — Forms a Debating Society — Makes 
Sixty Speeches for Harrison — Enters into Political Life on the "Working-Men's 
Side — Helps to form the Free Soil Party— Chosen United States Senator over 
Edward Everett — Aristocratic Politics in those Days — Wilson and the Slave- 
holding Senators — The Character of his Speaking — Full of Facts and Practi- 
cal Sense — His Usefulness as Chairman of the Military Committee — His "His- 
tory of the Anti-Slavery Measures in Congress-" — The 37th and 38th Congresses 
— The Summary of Anti-Slavery Legislation from that Book — Other Aboli- 
tionist Forces — Contrast of Sentiments of Slavery and of Freedom— Recogni- 
tion of Hayti and Liberia ; Specimen of the Debate — Slave and Free Doctrine 
on Education — Equality in Washington Street Cars — Pro-Slavery Good Taste 
— Solon's Ideal of Democracy Reached in America. 

It is interesting to notice how, in the recent strug- 
gle that has convulsed our country and tried our re- 
publican institutions, so many of the men who have 
held the working oar have been representative men 
of the people. To a great extent they have been 
men who have grown up with no other early worldly 
advantages than those which a democratic republic 
offers to every citizen born upon her soil. Lincoln 
from the slave states, and Chase and Henry Wilson in 
the free, may be called the peculiar sons of Democra- 
cy. That hard Spartan mother trained them early on 
her black broth to her fatigues, and wrestlings, and 
watchings, and gave them their shields on entering 
the battle of life with only the Spartan mother's brief 
— "With this, or upon this." 

269 



270 HENRY WILSON. 

Native force and Democratic institutions raised Lin- 
coln to the highest seat in the nation, and to no mean 
seat anion g the nations of the earth ; and the same 
forces in Massachusetts caused that State, in an hour 
of critical battle for the great principles of democratic 
liberty, to choose Henry Wilson, the self-taught, fear- 
less shoemaker's apprentice of Natick, over the head 
of the gifted and graceful Everett, the darling of for- 
eign courts, the representative of all the sentiments and 
training which transmitted aristocratic ideas have yet 
left in Boston and Cambridge. All this was part and 
parcel of the magnificent drama which has been acting 
on the stage of this country for the hope and consola- 
tion of all who are born to labor and poverty in all 
nations of the world. 

Henry Wilson, our present United States Senator, 
was born at Farmington, N. H., Feb. 12, 1818, of very 
poor parents. At the age of ten he was bound to a 
farmer till he was twenty-one. Here he had the usual 
lot of a farm boy — plain, abundant food, coarse cloth- 
ing, incessant work, and a few weeks' schooling at the 
district school in winter. 

In these ten years of toil, the boy, by twilight, fire- 
light, and on Sundays, had read over one thousand 
volumes of history, geography, biography and general 
literature, borrowed from the school libraries and 
from those of generous individuals. 

At twenty-one he was his own master, to begin the 
world ; and in looking over his inventory for starting 
in life, found only a sound and healthy body, and a 
mind trained to reflection by solitary thought. He 
went to Natick, Mass., to learn the trade of a shoe- 



ENTRANCE INTO POLITICAL LIFE. 271 

maker, and in working at it two years, he saved enough 
money to attend the academy at Concord and Wolfs- 
borough, N. H. But the . man with whom he had de- 
posited his hard earnings became insolvent ; the money 
he had toiled so long for, vanished; and he was 
obliged to leave his studies, go back to Natick and 
make more. Undiscouraged, he resolved still to pur- 
sue his object, uniting it with his daily toil. He form- 
ed a debating society among the young mechanics of 
the place ; investigated subjects, read, wrote and 
spoke on all the themes of the day, as the spirit with- 
in him gave him utterance. Among his fellow-me- 
chanics, some others were enkindled by his influence, 
and are now holding high places in the literary and 
diplomatic world. 

In 1840, young Wilson came forward as a public 
speaker. He engaged in the Harrison election cam- 
paign, made sixty speeches in about four months, 
and was well repaid by his share in the triumph of 
the party. He was then elected to the Massachusetts 
Legislature as representative from Natick. 

Having entered life on the working man's side, and 
known by his own experience the working man's trials, 
temptations and hard struggles, he felt the sacredness 
of a poor man's labor, and entered public life with a 
heart to take the part of the toiling and the oppressed. 

Of course he was quick to feel that the great ques- 
tion of our time was the question of labor and its 
rights and rewards. He was quick to feel the "irre- 
pressible conflict," which Seward so happily designa- 
ted, between the two modes of society existing in 
America, and to know that they must fight and strug- 



272 HENRY WILSON. 

gle till one of them throttled and killed the other ; 
and prompt to understand this, he made his early elec- 
tion to live or die on the side of the laboring poor, 
whose most oppressed type was the African slave. 

In the Legislature, he introduced a motion against 
the extension of slave territory; and in 1845, went 
with Whittier to Washington with the remonstrance 
of Massachusetts against the admission of Texas as a 
slave State. 

When the Whig party became inefficient in the 
cause of liberty through too much deference to the 
slave power, Henry Wilson, like Charles Sumner, left 
it, and became one of the most energetic and efficient 
organizers in forming the Free Soil party of Massa- 
chusetts. In its interests, he bought a daily paper in 
Boston, which for some time he edited with great 
ability. 

Meanwhile, he rose to one step of honor after 
another, in his adopted State ; he became President 
of the Massachusetts Senate ; and at length after a 
well contested election, was sent to take the place of 
the accomplished Everett in the United States Senate. 

His election was a sturdy triumph of principle. His 
antagonist had every advantage of birth and breeding, 
every grace which early leisure, constant culture, and 
the most persevering, conscientious self-education 
could afford. He was, in graces of person, manners 
and mind, the ideal of Massachusetts aristocracy, but 
he wanted that clear insight into actual events, which 
early poverty and labor had given to his antagonist. 
His sympathies in the great labor question of the land 
were with the graceful and cultivated aristocrats rather 



WILSON AND THE SLAYEHOLDING SENATE. 273 

than the clumsy, ungainly laborer ; and he but pro- 
fessed the feeling of all aristocrats in saying at the 
outset of his political life, while Wilson was yet a child, 
that in the event of a servile insurrection, he would 
be among the first to shoulder a musket to defend the 
masters. 

But the great day of the Lord was at hand. The 
events which since have unrolled in fire and blood, 
had begun their inevitable course ; and the plain work- 
ing-man was taken by the hand of Providence towards 
the high places where he, with other working men, 
should shape the destiny of the labor question for this 
age and for all ages. 

Wilson went to Washington in the very heat and 
fervor of that conflict which the gigantic Giddings, 
with his great body and unflinching courage, said to a 
friend, was to him a severer trial of human nerve than 
the facing of cannon and bullets. The slave aristoc- 
racy had come down in great wrath, as if knowing 
that its time was short. The Senate chamber rang 
with their oaths and. curses as they tore and raged like 
wild beasts against those whom neither their blandish- 
ments nor their threats could subdue. Wilson brought 
there his face of serene good nature, his vigorous, 
stocky frame, which had never seen ill-health, and in 
which the nerves were yet an undiscovered region. 
It was entirely useless to bully, or to threaten, or to 
cajole that honest, good-humored, immovable man, 
who stood like a rock in their way, and took all their 
fury as unconsciously as a rock takes the foam of 
breaking waves. In every anti-slavery movement he 
was always foremost, perfectly awake, perfectly well 



274 HENRY WILSON. 

informed, and with that hardy, practical business 
knowledge of men and things which came from his 
early education, prepared to work out into actual 
forms what Sumner gave out as splendid theories. 

Wilson's impression on the Senate was not mainly 
that of an orator. His speeches were as free from the 
artifices of rhetoric as those of Lincoln, but they were 
distinguished for the weight and abundance of the 
practical information and good sense which they con- 
tained. He never spoke on a subject till he had made 
himself minutely acquainted with it in all its parts, 
and was accurately familiar with all that belonged to 
it. Not even John Quincy Adams or Charles Sumner 
could show a more perfect knowledge of what they 
were talking about than Henry Wilson. Whatever 
extraneous stores of knowledge and belles lettres may 
have been possessed by any of his associates, no man 
on the floor of the Senate could know more of the 
United States of America than he ; and what was 
wanting in the graces of the orator, or the refinements 
of the rhetorician was more than made amends for in 
the steady, irresistible, strong tread of the honest man, 
determined to accomplish a worthy purpose. 

Wilson succeeded Benton as chairman of the Mili- 
tary Committee of the Senate, and it was fortunate for 
the country that when the sudden storm of the war 
broke upon us, so strong a hand held this helm. Gen. 
Scott said that he did more work in the first three 
months of the war than had been done in his position 
before for twenty years ; and Secretary Cameron at- 
tributed the salvation of Washington in those early 
days, mainly to Henry Wilson's power of doing the 



Wilson's "history of anti-slavery measures." 275 

apparently impossible in getting the Northern armies 
into the field in time to meet the danger. 

His recently published account of what Congress 
has done to destroy slavery, is a history which no man 
livinsr was better fitted to write. No man could be 

o 

more minutely acquainted with the facts, more capable 
of tracing effects to causes, and thus competent to 
erect this imperishable monument to the honor of his 
country. 

It is meet that the poor, farm-bound apprentice, the 
shoemaker of Natick, should thus chronicle the great 
history of the deliverance of labor from disgrace in 
this democratic nation. 

There is something sublime in the history of the move- 
ments of the 37th and 38th Congresses of the United 
States. Perhaps never in any country did an equal 
number of wise and just men meet together under a 
more religious sense of their responsibility to God and 
to mankind. Never had there been a deeper and 
more religious awe presiding over popular elections 
than those which sent those men to Congress to man 
our national ship in the terrors of the most critical 
passage our stormy world has ever seen. They were 
the old picked, tried seamen, stout of heart, giants in 
conscience and moral sense. They were the scarred 
veterans of long years of battling for the great prin- 
ciples of the Declaration of Independence, men who 
in old times had come through great battles with the 
beasts of the slavery Ephesus, and still wore the scars 
of their teeth. They had seen their president stricken 
down at their head, and though bleeding inwardly, 



276 HENRY WILSON. 

had closed up their ranks shoulder to shoulder, to go 
steadily on with the great work for which he died. 

These men it was who while the din of arms was 
resounding through the country, while Washington 
was one great camp and hospital, and the confusing 
rumors of wars were coming to it from the east and 
from the west, from the north and from the south — 
took up and carried to the end the grandest national 
moral reform ever accomplished in a given time. Many 
men of the common sort would have said, " This is no 
time to be driving at moral reforms. We must drive 
this war through first, and when we have done this, 
we will begin to wipe up, and adjust, and put away." 
So gigantic a war was apology enough to satisfy the 
consciences of men who looked only to precedents 
and the rules of ordinary statesmanship, but our Con- 
gress was largely made up of men who walked by a 
higher light, and judged by a higher standard than 
ever has been given to mere statesmanship before. 
The spirit of the old Puritans, their unworldly, God- 
fearing spirit, their steadfast flint-facedness in principle, 
came to a final and culminating development in these 
Congresses. 

Henry Wilson has written a "History of the Anti- 
Slavery Measures in Congress, 1 ' in a brief, clear, com- 
pact summary, and made of it a volume which ought 
to be in every true American library. It is a volume 
of which every American has just and honest reason 
to be proud, and to which every Republican the whole 
world over, should look with hope and trust, as ex- 
hibiting the magnificent morality, the dauntless cour- 
age, the unwearied faith, hope and charity that are the 



the 37th and 38th congresses. 277 

crown jewels of republics. We should be glad to see 
this book of Henry Wilson's in every farm house of 
New England, lying by the family Bible, under the 
old flag of the Union. The men who carried through 
these magnificent reforms — they are our jewels. 

Mr. Wilson gives in his book a condensed summary 
of the debates in the House relative to each step of 
the reform. For the most part it is a record of noble, 
Christian, unworldly patriotic sentiment — a sort of 
ideal statesmanship becoming real in tangible good 
deeds. 

Every day some new den in the Augean stable was 
exposed and opened up to daylight, and the cleansing 
baptism of liberty applied. There was some fluttering 
and screaming of owls and bats, and now and then 
the poor old dilapidated dragon of slavery gave a boot- 
less hiss, but nobody minded it. It was a whole-heart- 
ed, clean, pure, noble time in Congress, when those 
walls, so long defiled with the brawls, the mingled pro- 
fanity and obscenity of slaveholders and slavebreeders, 
now rang only to manly sentiments and cleanly, noble, 
Christian resolves, such as make the heart strong to 
hear. We quote from the close of Mr. Wilson's book 
the summary of what was done by these Congresses in 
the way of reform legislation. 

"As the Union armies advanced into the rebel States, 
slaves, inspired by the hope of personal freedom, 
flocked to their encampments, claiming protection 
against rebel masters, and offering to work and fight 
for the flag whose stars for the first time gleamed upon 
their vision with the radiance of liberty. Rebel mas- 
ters and rebel-sympathizing masters sought the en- 
18 



278 HENRY WILSON. 

campments of the loyal forces, demanding the surren- 
der of the escaped fugitives ; and they were often de- 
livered up by officers of the armies. To weaken the 
power of the insurgents, to strengthen the loyal forces, 
and assert the claims of humanity, the 37th Congress 
enacted an article of war, dismissing from the service 
officers guilty of surrendering these fugitives. 

Three thousand persons were held as slaves in the 
District of Columbia, over which the nation exercised 
exclusive jurisdiction ; the 37th Congress made these 
three thousand bondmen freemen, and made slavehold- 
ingin the capital of the nation for evermore impossible. 

"Laws and ordinances existed in the national capital 
that pressed with merciless rigor upon the colored peo- 
ple : the 37th Congress enacted that colored persons 
should be tried for the same offences, in the same man- 
ner, and be subject to the same punishments, as white 
persons; thus abrogating the 'black code.' 

"Colored persons in the capital of this Christian na- 
tion were denied the right to testify in the judicial tri- 
bunals ; thus placing their property, their liberties, and 
their lives, in the power of unjust and wicked men ; 
the 37th Congress enacted that persons should not be 
excluded as witnesses in the courts of the District on 
account of color. 

"In the capital of the nation, colored persons were 
taxed to support schools from which their own chil- 
dren were excluded ; and no public schools were pro- 
vided for the instruction of more than four thousand 
youth; the 38th Congress provided by law that pub- 
lic -schools should be established for colored children, 
and that the same rate of appropriations for colored 



SUMMARY OF ANTI-SLAVERY LEGISLATION. 279 

schools should be made as are made for schools for 
the education of white children. 

" The railways chartered by Congress, excluded from 
their cars colored persons, without the authority of 
law ; Congress enacted that there should be no exclu- 
sion from any car on account of color. 

"Into the territories of the United States, — one. 
third of the surface of the country, — the slaveholding 
class claimed the right to take and hold their slaves 
under the protection of law ; the 37th Congress pro- 
hibited slavery for ever in all the existing territory, 
and in all territory which may hereafter be acquired ; 
thus stamping freedom for all, for ever, upon the pub- 
lic domain. 

" As the war progressed, it became more clearly ap- 
parent that the rebels hoped to win the Border slave 
States ; that rebel sympathizers in those States hoped 
to join the rebel States ; and that emancipation in 
loyal States would bring repose to them, and weaken 
the power of the Rebellion ; the 37th Congress, on the 
recommendation of the President, by the passage of a 
joint resolution, pledged the faith of the nation to aid 
loyal States to emancipate the slaves therein. 

" The hoe and spade of the rebel slave were hard- 
ly less potent for the Rebellion than the rifle and 
bayonet of the rebel soldier. Slaves sowed and reaped 
for the rebels, enabling the rebel leaders to fill the 
wasting ranks of their armies, and feed them. To 
weaken the military forces and the power of the Re- 
bellion, the 37th Congress decreed that all slaves of 
persons giving aid and comfort to the Rebellion, es- 
caping from such persons, and taking refuge within 



2S0 HENRY WILSON. 

the lines of the army ; all slaves captured from such 
persons, or deserted by them ; all slaves of such per- 
sons, being within any place occupied by rebel forces, 
and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United 
States, — shall be captives of war, and shall be for ever 
free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves. 

" The provisions of the Fugitive-slave Act permitted 
disloyal masters to claim, and they did claim, the re- 
turn of their fugitive bondmen; the 37th Congress 
enacted that no fugitive should be surrendered until 
the claimant made oath that he had not given aid and 
comfort to the Rebellion. 

u The progress of the Rebellion demonstrated its 
power, and the needs of the imperilled nation. To 
strengthen the physical forces of the United States, 
the 37th Congress authorized the President to receive 
into the military service persons of African descent ; 
and every such person mustered into the service, his 
mother, his wife and children, owing service or labor 
to any person who should give aid and comfort to the 
Rebellion, was made for ever free. 

" The African slave-trade had been carried on by slave 
pirates under the protection of the flag of the United 
States. To extirpate from the seas that inhuman 
traffic, and to vindicate the sullied honor of the na- 
tion, the Administration early entered into treaty stip- 
ulations with the British Government for the mutual 
right of search within certain limits; and the 37th 
Congress hastened to enact the appropriate legislation 
to carry the treaty into effect. 

" The slaveholding class, in the pride of power, per- 
sistently refused to recognize the independence of 



SUMMARY OF ANTI-SLAVERY LEGISLATION. 281 

Ilayti and Liberia; thus dealing unjustly towards those 
nations, to the detriment of the commercial interests 
of the country; the 37th Congress recognized the in- 
dependence of those republics by authorizing the Pres- 
ident to establish diplomatic relations with them. 

" By the provisions of law, white male citizens alone 
were enrolled in the militia. In the amendment to 
the acts for calling out the militia, the 37th Cong 
provided for the enrollment and drafting of citizens, 
without regard to color ; and, by the Enrollment Act, 
colored persons, free or slave, are enrolled and drafted 
the same as white men. The 38th Congress enacted 
that colored soldiers shall have the same pay, cloth- 
ing, and rations, and be placed in all respects upon 
the same footing, as white soldiers. To encourage en- 
listments, and to aid emancipation, the 38th Congress 
decreed that every slave mustered into the military 
service shall be free for ever ; thus enabling every 
slave fit for military service to secure personal free- 
dom. 

"By the provisions of the fugitive-slave acts, slave- 
masters could hunt their absconding bondmen, require 
the people to aid in their recapture, and have them 
returned at the expense of the nation. The 38th Con- 
gress erased all fugitive-slave acts from the statutes of 
the Republic. 

" The law of 1807 legalized the coastwise slave-trade ; 
the 38th Congress repealed that act, and made the 
trade illegal. 

" The courts of the United States receive such testi- 
mony as is permitted in the States where the courts 
are holden. Several of the States exclude the testi- 



282 HENRY WILSON. 

mony of colored persons. The 38th Congress made 
it legal for colored persons to testify in all the courts 
of the United States. 

"Different views are entertained by public men rela- 
tive to the reconstruction of the governments of the 
seceded States, and the validity of the President's 
proclamation of emancipation. The 38th Congress 
passed a bill providing for the reconstruction of the 
governments of the rebel States, and for the emanci- 
pation of the slaves in those States ; but it did not re- 
ceive the approval of the President. 

" Colored persons were not permitted to carry the 
United States mails; the 38th Congress repealed the 
prohibitory legislation, and made it lawful for persons 
of color to carry the mails. 

" Wives and children of colored persons in the mili- 
tary and naval service of the United States were often 
held as slaves ; and, while husbands and fathers were 
absent fighting the battles of the country, these wives 
and children were sometimes removed and sold, and 
often treated with cruelty; the 38th Congress made 
free the wives and children of all persons engaged in 
the military or naval service of the country. 

"The disorganization of the slave system, and the exi- 
gencies of civil war, have thrown thousands of freed- 
men upon the charity of the nation ; to relieve their 
immediate needs, and to aid them through the transi- 
tion period, the 38th Congress established a Bureau of 
Freedmen. 

"The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, its abo- 
lition in the District of Columbia, the freedom of col- 
ored soldiers, their wives and children, emancipation 



OTHER ABOLITIONIST FORCES. 283 

in Maryland, West Virginia, and Missouri, and by the 
re-organized State authorities of Virginia, Tennessee, 
and Louisiana, and the President's Emancipation Pro- 
clamation, disorganized the slave system, and practi- 
cally left few persons in bondage ; but slavery still 
continued in Delaware and Kentucky, and the slave 
codes remain, unrepealed in the rebel States. To an- 
nihilate the slave system, its codes and usages; to 
make slavery impossible, and freedom universal, — the 
38th Congress submitted to the people an anti-slavery 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States. 
The adoption of that crowning measure assures free- 
dom to all. 

"Such are the "Anti-slavery Measures" of the 
Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses during 
the past four crowded years. Seldom in the history 
of nations is it given to any body of legislators or law- 
givers to enact or institute a series of measures so vast 
in their scope, so comprehensive in their character, so 
patriotic, just, and humane. 

"But, while the 37th and 38th Congresses were enact- 
ing this anti-slavery legislation, other agencies were 
working to the consummation of the same end, — the 
complete and final abolition of slavery. The President 
proclaims three and a half millions of bondmen in 
the rebel States henceforward and for ever free. Mary- 
land, Virginia, and Missouri adopt immediate and un- 
conditional emancipation. The partially re-organized 
rebel States of Virginia and Tennessee, Arkansas and 
Louisiana, accept and adopt the unrestricted abolition 
of slavery. Illinois and other States hasten to blot 
from their statute-books their dishonoring black codes. 



284 HENRY WILSON. 

The Attorney- General officially pronounces the negro 
a citizen of the United States. The negro, who had 
no status in the Supreme Court, is admitted by the 
Chief Justice to practice as an attorney before that 
august tribunal. Christian men and women follow 
the loyal armies with the agencies of mental and moral 
instruction to fit and prepare the enfranchised freed- 
men for the duties of the higher condition of life now 
opening before them." 

We cannot quit this subject without remarking on 
the striking character of the debates Mr. Wilson's 
book records on these subjects. The great majority 
of Congress utters aloud and with one consent, just, 
manly, noble, humane, large-hearted sentiments and re- 
solves, while a poor wailing minority is picking up and 
retailing the old worn out jokes and sneers and inci- 
vilities and obscenities of the dying dragon of slavery. 

As a specimen of the utter naivete and ignorance 
of comity and good manners induced by slavery, in 
contrast with the courtesy and refinement of true re- 
publicanism, we give this fragment of a debate on the 
recognition of Hayti and Liberia. 

Mr. Davis, of Kentucky, after plaintively stating 
that he is weary, sick, disgusted, despondent with the 
introduction of slaves and slavery into this chamber, 
proceeds to state his terror lest should these measures 
take effect, these black representatives would have to 
be received on terms of equality with those of other 
nations. Mr. Davis goes on to say: "A big negro fel- 
low, dressed out in his silver and gold lace, presented 
himself in the court of Louis Napoleon, I admit, and 
was received. Now, sir, / want no such exhibition as 



RECOGNITION OF HAYTI AND LIBERIA. 285 

that in our country. The American minister, Mr. Ma- 
son, was present on that occasion ; and he was sleeved 
by some Englishman — I have forgotten his name — 
who was present, who pointed out to him the ambas- 
sador of Soulouque, and said, ' What do you think of 
him ?' Mr. Mason turned round and said, ' I think, 
'clothes and all, he is worth a thousand dollars.' " 

Mr. Davis evidently considered this witticism of Mr. 
Mason's as both a specimen of high bred taste and a 
settling argument. 

In reply, Mr. Sumner drily says : " The Senator 
alludes to some possible difficulties, I hardly know 
how to characterize them, which may occur here in 
social life, should the Congress of these United States 
undertake at this late day, simply in harmony with the 
law of nations, and following the policy of civilized 
communities, to pass the bill under discussion. I shall 
not follow the senator on those sensitive topics. I 
content myself with a single remark. I have more 
than once had the opportunity of meeting citizens of 
these republics ; and I say nothing more than truth 
when I add, that I have found them so refined, and so 
full of self-respect, that I am led to believe no one of 
them charged with a mission from his government,will 
seek any society where he will not be entirely wel- 
come. Sir, the senator from Kentucky may banish 
all anxiety on that account. No representative from 
Hayti or Liberia will trouble him." 

Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky said: "I will only say, 
sir, that I have an innate sort of confidence and pride 
that the race to which we belong is a superior race 
among the races of the earth, and I want to see that 



286 HENRY WILSON. 

pride maintained The Romans thought that no peo- 
ple on the face of the earth were equal to the citizens 
of Rome, and it made them the greatest people in the 
world. * * * The spectacle of such a diplomatic 
dignitary in our country, would, I apprehend, be of- 
fensive to the people for many reasons, and wound 
their habitual sense of superiority to the African race." 
Mr. Thomas of Maine, on the other hand, presents 
the true basis of Christian chivalry: U I have no de- 
sire to enter into the question of the relative capacity 
of races ; but if the inferiority of the African race 
were established, the inference as to our duty would 
be very plain. If this colony has been built up by an 
inferior race of men, they have upon us a yet stronger 
claim for our countenance, recognition, and, if need 
be, protection. The instincts of the human mind and 
heart concur with the policy of men and governments 
to help and protect the weak. I understand that to a 
child or to a woman I am to show a degree of for- 
bearance, kindness, and of gentleness even, which I 
am not necessarily to extend to my equal." 

In like manner contrast a passage of sentiment be- 
tween two senators on the education bill. 

Mr. Carlile of Virginia, "did not see any good rea- 
son why the Congress of the United States should itself 
enter upon a scheme for educating negroes." He un- 
derstood "the reason assigned for the government of a 
State undertaking the education of the citizens of the 
State is that the citizens in this country are the govern- 
ors;" but he presumed "we have not yet reached the 
point when it is proposed to elevate to the condition 
of voters the negroes of the land." 



SLAVERY AND FREEDOM DOCTRINE ON EDUCATION. 287 

Mr. Grimes in reply said, "It may be true, that, in 
that section of the country where the senator is most 
acquainted, the whole idea of education proceeds from 
the fact, that the person who is to be educated is merely 
to be educated because he is to exercise the elective 
franchise ; but I thank God that I was raised in a sec- 
tion of the country where there are nobler and loftier 
sentiments entertained in regard to education. We 
entertain the opinion that all human beings are ac- 
countable beings. We believe that every man should 
be taught so that he may be able to read the law by 
which he is to be governed, and under which he may 
be punished. We believe that every accountable be- 
ing should be able to read the word of God, by which 
he should guide his steps in this life, and shall be 
judged in the life to come. We believe that educa- 
tion is necessary in order to elevate the human race. 
We believe that it is necessary in order to keep our 
jails and our penitentiaries and our alms-houses free 
from inmates. In my section of the country, we do 
not educate any race upon any such low and grovelling 
ideas as those that seem to be entertained by the sen- 
ator from Virginia." 

But the warmest battle was on the question of the 
right of colored persons to ride in the cars. The 
chivalry maintained their side by such kind of lan- 
guage as this: "Has any gentleman who was born a 
gentleman, or any man who has the instincts of a gen- 
tleman, felt himself degraded by the fact that he was 
not honored by a seat beside some free negro ? Has 
any lady in the United States felt herself aggrieved 



288 HENRY WILSON. 

that she was not honored with the company of Miss 
Dinah or Miss Chloe, on board these cars ?" 

Again, in the course of the debate, another senator 
says of Mr. Sumner, " He may ride with negroes, if 
he thinks proper, so may I ; but if I see proper not to 
do so, I shall follow my natural instincts, as he follows 
his." 

"I shall vote for this amendment," says Henry Wil- 
son; "and my own observation convinces me that 
justice, not to say decency, requires that I should do 
so. Some weeks ago, I rode to the capitol in one of 
these cars. On the front part of the car, standing 
with the driver, were, I think, five colored clergymen 
of the Methodist Episcopal church, dressed like gen- 
tlemen, and behaving like gentlemen. These clergy- 
men were riding with the driver on the front platform, 
and inside the car were two drunken loafers, conduct- 
ing and behaving themselves so badly that the con- 
ductor threatened to turn them out." 

"The senator from Illinois tells us," said Mr. Wilson, 
"that the colored people have a legal right to ride in 
these cars now. We know it ; nobody doubts it ; but 
this company into which we breathed the breath 
of life, outrages the rights of twenty-five thousand 
colored people in this District, in our presence, in de- 
fiance of our opinions. * * * I tell the senator 
from Illinois that I care far more for the rights of the 
humblest black child that treads the soil of the District 
of Columbia than I do for the prejudices of this cor- 
poration, and its friends and patrons. The rights of 
the humblest colored man in the capital of this Chris- 
tian nation are dearer to me than the commendations 



PRO-SLAVESY GOOD TASTE. 289 

or the thanks of all persons in the city of Washington 
who sanction this violation of the rights of a race. I 
give this vote, not to offend this corporation, not to 
offend anybody in the District of Columbia, but to 
protect the rights of the poor and the lowly, trodden 
under the heel of power. I trust we shall protect 
rights, if we do it over prejudices and over interests, 
until every man in this country is fully protected in 
all the rights that belong to beings made in the image 
of God. Let the free man of this race be permitted 
to run the career of life ; to make of himself all that 
God intended he should make, when he breathed into 
him the breath of life." 

So there they had it, at the mouth of an educated 
northern working-man, who knew what man as man was 
worth, and the retiring senators, giving up the battle, 
wailed forth as follows : 

"Poor, helpless, despised, inferior race of white 
men, you have very little interest in this government, 
you are not worth consideration in the legislation of 
this country ; but let your superior Sambo's interest 
come in question, and you will find the most tender 
interest on his behalf. What a pity there is not some- 
body to lamp-black white men, so that their rights 
could be secured." 

Mr. Powell thought that the Senator from Massa- 
chusetts, the next time one of his Ethiopian friends 
comes to complain to him on the subject, should bring 
an action for him in court, and adds, with the usual 
good taste of his party : * * " The Senator has 
indicated to his fanatical brethren those people who 
meet in free love societies, the old ladies and the sensa- 



290 HENRY WILSON. 

tion preachers, and those who live on fanaticism, that 
he has offered it, and I see no reason why we should 
take up the time of the Senate in squabbling over the 
Senator's amendments, introducing the negro into 
every wood-pile that comes along." 

Mr. Saulsbury closes a discussion on negro testimony 
with the following pious ejaculation: "He did not 
wish to say any more about the nigger aspect of 
the case. It is here every day ; and I suppose it will 
be here every day for years to come, till the Demo- 
cratic party comes in power and wipes all legislation 
of this character out of the statute-book, which I trust 
in God they will do." 

All this sort of talk, shaken in the face of the joy- 
ous band of brothers who were going on their way 
rejoicing, reminds us forcibly of John Bunyan's de- 
scription of the poor old toothless giant, who in his 
palmy days used to lunch upon pilgrims, tearing their 
flesh and cracking their bones in the most comfortable 
way possible, but who now having sustained many a 
severe brush, was so crippled with rheumatism that 
he could only sit in the mouth of his cave, mumbling, 
"You will never mend till more of you are burned." 

Thank God for the day we live in, and for such men 
as Henry Wilson and his compeers of the 37th and 
38th Congresses. They have at last put our American 
Union in that condition which old Solon gave as his 
ideal of true Democracy, namely : 

A STATE WHERE AN INJURY TO THE MEANEST MEMBER 
IS FELT AS AN INJURY TO THE WHOLE. 



CHAPTER VH 

HORACE GREELEY. 

The Scotch-Irish Race in the United States — Mr. Greeley a Partly Reversed Spec- 
imen of it — His Birth and Boyhood — Learns to Read Books Upside Down — 
His Apprenticeship on a Newspaper — The Town Encyclopaedia — His Industry 
at his Trade — His First Experience of a Fugitive Slave Chase — His First Ap- 
pearance in New York. The Work on the Polyglot Testament — Mr. Greeley 
as " the Ghost "—The First Cheap Daily Paper— The Firm of Greeley & Story 
— The New Yorker, the Jeffersonian and the Log Cabin — Mr. Greeley as 
Editor of the New Yorker — Beginning of The Tribune — Mr. Greeley's Theory 
of a Political Newspaper— His Love for The Tribune — The First Week of that 
Paper — The Attack of the Sun and its Result — Mr. McElrath's Partnership — 
Mr. Greeley's Fourierism — " The Bloody Sixth " — The Cooper Libel Suits — 
Mr. Greeley in Congress — He goes to Europe — His course in the Rebellion — 
His Ambition and Qualifications for Office — The Key-Note of his Character. 

No race has stronger characteristics, bodily or men- 
tal, than that powerful, obstinate, fiery, pious, hu- 
morous, honest, industrious, hard-headed, intelligent, 
thoughtful and reasoning people, the Scotch-Irish. 
The vigorous qualities of the Scotch-Irish have left 
broad and deep traces upon the history of the United 
States. As if with some hereditary instinct, they 
settled along the great Allegheny ridge, principally 
from Pennsylvania to Georgia, in the fertile val- 
leys and broader expanses of level land on either side, 
especially to the westward. In the healthy and gen- 
ial air of these regions, renowned for the handsomest 
breed of men and women in the world, the Scotch- 
Irish acted out with thorough freedom, all the vigor- 
ous and often violent impulses of their nature. They 
were pioneers, Indian-fighters, politicians, theologians; 



294 HORACE GREELEY. 

and they were as polemic in everything else as in the- 
ology. Jackson and Calhoun were of this blood. An 
observant travellerin Tennessee described to the writer 
the interest with which he found in that state literally . 
hundreds of forms and faces with traits so like the 
lean erect figure, high narrow head, stiff black hair, 
and stern features of the fighting old President, that 
they might have been his brothers. Many of our em- 
inent Presbyterian theologians like the late Dr. Wilson, 
of Cincinnati, have been Scotch-Irish too, and with their 
spiritual weapons they have waged many a controversy 
as unyielding, as stern and as unsparing as the battle 
in which Jackson beat down Calhoun by showing him 
a halter, or as that brutal knife fight in which he and 
Thomas H. Benton nearly cut each other's lives out. 

Horace Greeley is of this Scotch-Irish race, and af- 
ter a rule which physiologists well know to be not 
very uncommon, he presents a direct reverse of many 
of its traits, more especially its physical ones. Instead 
of a lean, erect person, dry hard muscles, a high nar- 
row head, coarse stiff black hair, and a stern look, he 
tends to be fat, is shambling and bowed over in carry- 
ing himself, thinskinned and smooth and fair as a baby, 
with a wide, long, yet rounded head, silky-fine almost 
white hair, and a habitually meek sort of smile, which 
however must not be trusted to as an index of the 
mind within. Meek as he looks, no man living is 
readier with a strong sharp answer. Non-resistant as 
he is physically, there is not a more uncompromising 
an opponent and intense combatant in these United 
States. Mentally, he shows a predominance of Scotch- 



mr. greeley's birth and youth 295 

Irish blood modified by certain traits which reveal them- 
selves in his readiness to receive new theories of life. 

Mr. Greeley was born Feb. 3d, 1811, at his father's 
farm, in Amherst, New Hampshire. The town was 
part of a district first settled by a small company of 
sixteen families of Scotch-Irish from Londonderry. 
These were part of a considerable emigration in 1718 
from that city, whose members at first endeavored 
to settle in Massachusetts ; but they were so ill re- 
ceived by the Massachusetts settlers that they found 
it necessary to scatter away into distant parts of the 
country before they could find rest for the soles of 
their feet. 

The ancestors of Mr. Greeley were farmers, those of 
the name of Greeley being often also blacksmiths. 
The boy was fully occupied with hard farm work, and 
he attended the American farmers' college, the District 
School. He had an intense natural love for acquiring 
knowledge, and learned to read of himself. He could 
read any child's book when he was three, and any or- 
dinary book at four ; and having, as his biographer, 
Mr. Parton, suggests, still an overplus of mental activ 
ity, he learned to read as readily with the book side 
ways or upside down, as right side up. 

Mr. Greeley, like a number of men who have grown 
up to become capable of a vast quantity of hard work 
and usefulness, was extremely feeble at birth, and was 
even thought scarcely likely to live when he first en- 
tered the world. During his first year he was feeble 
and sickly. His mother, who had lost her two children 
born next before him, seemed to be doubly fond of 
her weak little one, both for the sake of those that 
19 



296 HORACE GREELEY. 

were gone, and of Lis very weakness, and she kept 
him by her side much more closely than if he had been 
strong and well ; and day after day, she sung and re- 
peated to him an endless store of songs and ballads, 
stories and traditions. This vivid oral literature doubt- 
less had great influence in stimulating the child's nat- 
ural aptitude for mental activity. 

Mr. Greeley's father was not a much better financier 
than his son. In 1820, in spite of all the honest hard- 
work that he could do, he became bankrupt, and in 
1821 moved to a new residence in Vermont. 

Mr. Greeley seems to have had such an inborn in- 
stinct after newspapers and newspaper work, as Mozart 
had for music and musical composition. He himself 
says on this point, in his own " Recollections " in The 
New York Ledger, " Having loved and devoured 
newspapers — indeed every form of periodical — from 
childhood, I early resolved to be a printer if I could." 
When only eleven years old he applied to be received 
as an apprentice in a newspaper office at Whitehall, 
Vt., and was greatly cast down by being refused for 
his youth. Four years afterwards, in the spring of 
1826, he obtained employment in the office of the 
Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vt., and thus 
began his professional career. 

As a young man, Mr. Greeley was not only poorly 
but most extremely carelessly dressed ; absent minded 
yet observant ; awkward and indeed clownish in his 
manners; extremely fond of the game of checkers, 
at which he seldom found an equal ; and of fishing and 
bee-hunting. Fonder still he was of reading and ac- 
quiring general knowledge, for which a public library 



BECOMES A SKILFUL PRINTER. 297 

in the town offered valuable advantages ; and he very 
soon became, as a biographer says, a " town encyclo- 
pedia," appealed to as a court of last resort, by every 
one who was at a loss for information. In the local 
debating society of the place he was assiduous and 
prominent, and was noticeable both for the remarka- 
ble body of detailed facts which he could bring to 
bear upon the questions discussed, and for his thor- 
ough devotion to his argument. Whatever his opinion 
was, he stuck to it against either reasoning or author- 
ity. 

In his calling as a printer, he was most laborious, 
and quickly became the most valuable hand in the of- 
fice. He also began here his experience as a writer — 
if that may be called written which was never set down 
with a pen. For he used to compose condensations of 
news paragraphs, and even original paragraphs of his 
own, framing his sentences in his mind as he stood at 
the case, and setting them up in type entirely without 
the intermediate process of setting them down in man- 
uscript. This practice was exactly the way to culti- 
vate economy, clearness, and directness of style ; as it 
was necessary to know accurately what was to be said, 
or else the letters in the composing stick would have 
to be distributed and set up again ; and it was natural 
to use the fewest and plainest possible words. 

While Horace was thus at work, his father had again 
removed beyond the Alleghanies, where he was doing 
his best to bring some new land under cultivation. 
The son, meanwhile, and for some time after his ap- 
prenticeship too, used to send to his father all the mon- 
ey that he could save from his scanty wages. He con- 



298 HORACE GREELEY. 

tinued to assist his father, indeed, until the latter was 
made permanently comfortable upon a valuable and 
well stocked farm; and even paid up some of his 
father's old debts in New Hampshire thirty years after 
they were contracted. 

Mr. Greeley has recorded that while in Poultney he 
witnessed a fugitive slave chase. New York had then 
yet a remainder of slavery in her, in the persons of a 
few colored people who had been under age when the 
state abolished slavery, and had been left by law to wait 
for their freedom until they should be twenty-eight 
years old. Mr. Greeley tells the story in the N. Y. 
Ledger, in sarcastic and graphic words, as follows : 

" A young negro who must have been uninstructed 
in the sacredness of constitutional guaranties, the 
rights of property, &c, &c, &c, feloniously abstract- 
ed himself from his master in a neighboring New York 
town, and conveyed the chattel personal to our village; 
where he was at work when said master, with due 
process and following, came over to reclaim and re- 
cover the goods. I never saw so large a number of 
men and boys so suddenly on our village-green, as his 
advent incited ; and the result was a speedy disap- 
pearance of the chattel, and the return of his master, 
disconsolate and niggerless, to the place whence he 
came. Everything on our side was impromptu and 
instinctive, and nobody suggested that envy or hate 
of the South, or of New York, or of the master, had 
impelled the rescue. Our people hated injustice and 
oppression, and acted as if they couldn't help it." 

In June 1830, the Northern Spectator was discon- 
tinued, and our encyclopedic apprentice was turned 



FIRST APPEARANCE IN NEW YORK. 299 

loose on the world. Hereupon lie traveled, partly on 
foot and partly by canal, to his father's place in West- 
ern Pennsylvania. Here he remained a while, and 
then after one or two unsuccessful attempts to find 
work, succeeded at Erie, Pa., where he was employed 
for seven months. During this time his board with his 
employer having been part of his pay, he used for 
other personal expenses six dollars in cash. The 
wages remaining due him amounted to just ninety-nine 
dollars. Of this he now gave his father eighty-five, 
put the rest in his pocket and went to New York. 

He reached the city on Friday morning at sunrise, 
August 18th, 1831, with ten dollars, his bundle, and 
his trade. He engaged board and lodging at $2.50 
a week, and hunted the printing offices for employ- 
ment during that day and Saturday in vain ; fell in 
with a fellow Verrnonter early Monday morning, a 
journeyman printer like himself, and was by him pre- 
sented to his foreman. Now there was in the office a 
very difficult piece of composition, a polyglot testa- 
ment, on which various printers had refused to work. 
The applicant was, as he always had been, and will 
be, very queer looking ; insomuch that while waiting 
for the foreman's arrival, the other printers had been 
impelled to make many personal remarks about him. 
But though equally entertained with his appearance, 
the foreman, rather to oblige the introducer than from 
any admiration of the new hand, permitted him a trial, 
and he was set at work on the terrible Polyglot. We 
transcribe Mr. Parton's lively account of the sequel : 

"After Horace had been at work an hour or two, 
Mr. West, the 'boss,' came into the office. What his 



300 HORACE GREELEY. 

feelings were when lie saw the new man may be in- 
ferred from a little conversation on the subject which 
took place between him and the foreman: 

" 'Did you hire that d fool?' asked West, with 

no small irritation. 

'"Yes; we must have hands, and he's the best I 
could get,' said the foreman, justifying his conduct, 
though he was really ashamed of it. 

" ' Well,' said the master, 'for Heaven's sake pay him 
off to-night, and let him go about his business.' 

"Horace worked through the day with his usual in- 
tensity, and in perfect silence. At night he presented 
to the foreman, as the custom then was, the 'proof of 
his day's work. What astonishment was depicted in 
the good-looking countenance of that gentleman, 
when he discovered that the proof before him was 
greater in quantity and more correct than that of any 
other day's work on the Polyglot! There was no 
thought of sending the new journeyman about his 
business now. He was an established man at once. 
Thenceforward, for several months, Horace worked 
regularly and hard on the Testament, earning about 
six dollars a week." 

While a journeyman here, he worked very hard in- 
deed, as he was paid by the piece, and the work was 
necessarily slow. At the same time, according to his 
habit, he was accustomed to talk very fluently, his first 
day's silent labor having been an exception ; and his 
voluble and earnest utterance, singular, high voice, 
fullness, accuracy, and readiness with facts, and pos- 
itive though good-natured tenacious disputatiousness, 
together with his very marked personal traits, made him 



MR. GREELEY AS "THE GHOST." 301 

the phenomenon of the office. His complexion was so 
fair, and his hair so flaxen white, that the men nicknamed 
him "the Ghost." The mischievous juniors played 
him many tricks, some of them rough enough, but he 
only begged to be let alone, so that he might work, 
and they soon got tired of teasing from which there 
was no reaction. Besides, he was forever lending 
them money, for like very many of the profession, the 
other men in the office were profuse with whatever 
funds were in hand, and often needy before pay-day ; 
while his own unconscious parsimony in personal ex- 
penditures was to him a sort of Fortunatus' purse — an 
unfailing fountain. 

For about a year and a half Mr. Greeley worked as 
a journeyman printer. During 1832 he had become 
acquainted with a Mr. Story, an enterprising young 
printer, and also with Horatio D. Sheppard, the origi- 
nator of the idea of a Cheap Daily Paper. The three 
consulted and co-operated ; in December the printing 
firm of Greeley & Story was formed, and on the first 
of January, 1833, the first number of the first cheap 
New York Daily, "The Morning Post," was issued, 
"price two cents," Dr. Sheppard being editor. Vari- 
ous disadvantages stopped the paper before the end 
of the third week, but the idea was a correct one. The 
New York Sun, issued in accordance with it nine 
months later, is still a prosperous newspaper; and the 
great morning dailies of New York, including the 
Tribune, are radically upon the same model. 

Though this paper stopped, the job printing firm 
of Greeley & Story went on and made money. At 



302 HORACE GREELEY. 

Mr. Story's death, July 9, 1833, his brother-in-law, 
Mr. Winchester, took his place in the office. In 1834 
the firm resolved to establish a weekly ; and on March 
22d, 1834, appeared the first number of the Weekly 
New Yorker, owned by the firm, and with Mr. Greeley 
as editor. He had now found his proper work, and 
he has pursued it ever since with remarkable force, 
industry and success. 

This success, however, was only editorial, not finan- 
cial, so far as the New Yorker was concerned. The 
paper began with twelve subscribers, and without any 
flourishes or promises. By its own literary, political 
and statistical value, its circulation rose in a year to 
4,500, and afterwards to 9,000. But when it stopped, 
Sept. 20, 1841, it left its editor laboring under troub- 
lesome debts, both receivable and payable. The diffi- 
culty was manifold ; its chief sources were, Mr. Gree- 
ley's own deficiencies as a financier, supplying too 
many subscribers on credit, and the great business 
crash of 1837. 

During the existence of the New Yorker, Mr. Greeley 
also edited two short-lived but influential campaign po- 
litical sheets. One of these, the Jeffersonian, was pub- 
lishedweekly, at Albany. This was a Whig paper, which 
appeared during a year from March, 1838, and kept 
its editor over-busy, with the necessary weekly jour- 
ney to Albany, and the double work. The other was 
the Log Cabin, the well-known Harrison campaign 
paper, issued weekly during the exciting days of 
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too," in 1840, and which was 
continued as a family paper for a year afterwards. 
Of the very first number of this famous little sheet, 



EDITOR OF THE NEW YORKER. 303 

48,000 were sold, and the edition rapidly increased to 
nearly 90,000. Neither of these two papers, however, 
made much money for their editor. But during his la- 
bors on the three T the New Yorker, Jeffersonian, and 
Log Cabin, he had gained a standing as a political 
and statistical editor of force, information and ability. 

Mr. Greeley's editorial work on the New Yorker 
was a sort of literary spring-time to him. The paper 
itself was much more largely literary than the Tribune 
now is. In his editorial writing in those days, more- 
over, there is a certain rhetorical plentifulness of ex- 
pression which the seriousness and the pressures of an 
overcrowded life have long ago cut sharply and close- 
ly off; and he even frequently indulged in poetical 
compositions. This ornamental material, however, 
was certainly not his happiest kind of effort. Mr. 
Greeley does his best only by being wholly utilitarian. 
Poetry and rhetoric appear as well from his mind as 
a great long red feather would, sticking out of his 
very oldest white hat. 

The great work of Mr. Greeley's life, however — 
The New York Tribune — had not begun yet, though 
he was thirty years old. Its commencement was an 
nounced in one of the last numbers of the Log Cabin, 
for April 10, 1841, and its first number appeared on 
the very day of the funeral solemnities with which 
New York honored the memory of President Harrison. 
Mr. Greeley's own account, in one of his articles in 
the New York Ledger, is an interesting statement of 
his Theory of a Political Newspaper. He says : 

"My leading idea was the establishment of a jour- 
nal removed alike from servile partizanship on the one 



304 HORACE GREELEY. 

hand, and from gagged, mincing neutrality on the 
other. Party spirit is so fierce and intolerant in this 
country, that the editor of a non-partizan sheet is re- 
strained from saying what he thinks and feels on the 
most vital, imminent topics ; while, on the other hand, 
a Democratic, Whig, or Republican journal is gen- 
erally expected to praise or blame, like or dislike, 
eulogize or condemn, in precise accordance with the 
views and interest of its party. I believed there was 
a happy medium between these extremes — a position 
from which a journalist might openly and heartily ad- 
vocate the principles and commend the measures of 
that party to which his convictions allied him, yet dis- 
sent frankly from its course on a particular question, 
and even denounce its candidates if they were shown 
to be deficient in capacity, or (far worse) in integrity. 
I felt that a journal thus loyal to its own convic- 
tions, yet ready to expose and condemn unworthy 
conduct or incidental error on the part of men attach- 
ed to its party, must be far more effective, even party- 
wise, than though it might always be counted on to 
applaud or reprobate, bless or curse, as the party pre- 
judices or immediate interest might seem to pre- 
scribe." 

Mr. Greeley has now been the chief editor of the 
Tribune for twenty -six years, and the persistent love 
with which he still regards his gigantic child strikingly 
appears in the final paragraph of the same article : 

"Fame is a vapor; popularity an accident; riches 
take wings ; the only earthly certainty is oblivion — no 
man can foresee what a day may bring forth ; and those 
who cheer to-day will often curse to-morrow ; and yet 



HIS LOVE FOR THE TRIBUNE. 305 

I cherish the hope that the Journal I projected and 
established will live and nourish long after I shall have 
moldered into forgotten dust, being guided by a larg- 
er wisdom, a more unerring sagacity to discover the 
right, though not by a more unfaltering readiness to 
embrace and defend it at whatever personal cost ; and 
that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to fu- 
ture eyes the still intelligible inscription, 'Founder of 
The New York Tribune. " 

The Tribune began with some 600 subscribers. Of 
its first number 5,000 copies were printed, and, as Mr. 
Greeley himself once said, he "found some difficulty 
in giving them away." At the end of the first week 
the cash account stood, receipts, $92 ; expenditures, 
$525. Now the proprietor's whole money capital was 
$1,000, borrowed money. But — as has more than 
once been the case with others — an unjust attack on 
the Tribune strengthened it. An unprincipled at- 
tempt was made by the publisher of the Sun, to bribe 
and bully the newsmen and then to flog the newsboys 
out of selling the Tribune. The Tribune was prompt 
in telling the story to the public, and the public show- 
ed that sense of justice so natural to all communities, 
by subscribing to it at the rate of three hundred a 
day for three weeks at a time. In four weeks it sold 
an edition of six thousand, and in seven it sold eleven 
thousand, which was then all that it could print. Its 
advertising patronage grew equally fast. And what 
was infinitely more than this rush of subscribers, a 
steady and judicious business man became a partner 
with Mr. Greeley in the paper, at the end of July, 
not four months from its first issue. This was Mr. 



306 HORACE GREELEY. 

Thomas McElrath, whose sound business management 
undoubtedly supplied to the concern an element more 
indispensable to its continued prosperity, than any 
editorial ability whatever. 

The Tribune, as we have seen, like the infant Her- 
cules in the old fable, successfully resisted an attempt 
to strangle it in its cradle. From that time to this, the 
paper and its editor have lived in a healthy and invig- 
orating atmosphere of violent attacks of all sorts, on 
grounds political, social, moral and religious. The 
paper has not -been found fault with, however, for be- 
ing flat or feeble or empty. The first noticeable dis- 
turbance after the Sun attack was the Fourierite con- 
troversy. Perhaps Mr. Greeley's Fourierism — or So- 
cialism, as it might be better called — was the princi- 
pal if not the sole basis of all the notorious uproars 
that have been made for a quarter of a century about 
his "isms," and his being a "philosopher." During 
1841 and several following years, the Tribune was the 
principal organ in the United States of the efforts then 
made to exemplify and prove in actual life the doc- 
trines of Charles Fourier. The paper was violently 
assaulted with the charge that these doctrines neces- 
sarily implied immorality and irreligion. The Tribune 
never was particularly " orthodox," and while it vigor- 
ously defended itself, it could not honestly in doing so 
say what would satisfy the stricter doctrinalists of the 
different orthodox religious denominations. More- 
over, the practical experiments made to organize Four- 
ierite "phalanxes " and the like, all failed ; so that in 
one sense, both the Fourierite movement was a failure, 
and The Tribune was vanquished in the discussion. 



THE "BLOODY SIXTH" THE COOPER LIBEL SUITS. 307 

But the controversy was a great benefit to the cause 
of associated human effort ; and there can be no doubt 
that the various endeavors at the present day in prog- 
ress to apply the principle of association to the easing 
and improving of the various concerns of life, present 
a much more hopeful prospect than would have been 
the case without the ardent and energetic advocacy 
of The Tribune. 

The next quarrel was with " the Bloody Sixth," 
as it was called, i. e. the low and rowdy politicians of 
the Sixth Ward, then the most corrupt part of the 
city. These politicians and their followers, enraged at 
certain exposures of their misdeeds in the spring of 
1842, demanded a retraction, and only getting a hot- 
ter denunciation than before, promised to come down 
and " smash the office." The whole establishment was 
promptly armed with muskets; arrangements were 
made for flinging bricks from the roof above and spurt- 
ing steam from the engine boiler below ; but the 
" Bloody Sixth " never came. 

The Cooper libel suits were in consequence of al- 
leged libelous matter about J. Fenimore Cooper, who 
was a bitter tempered and quarrelsome man, and to the 
full as pertinacious as Mr. Greeley himself. This mat- 
ter was printed November 17, 1841. The first suit in 
consequence was tried December 9, 1842. The dam- 
ages were laid at $3,000. Cooper and Greeley each 
argued on his own side to the Court, and Cooper got 
a verdict for $200. Mr. Greeley went home and wrote 
a long and sharp narrative of the whole, for which 
Cooper instantly brought another suit ; but he found 



308 HORACE GREELEY. 

that his prospect this time did not justify his perse- 
verance, and the suit never came to trial. 

In 1844 Mr. Greeley worked with tremendous in- 
tensity for the election of Henry Clay, but to no pur- 
pose. In February, 1845, the Tribune office was 
thoroughly burnt out, but fortunately with no serious 
loss. The paper was throughout completely opposed 
to the Mexican War. In 1848, and subsequently, the 
paper at first with hopeful enthusiasm and at last with 
sorrow chronicled the outbreak, progress and fate of 
the great Republican uprising in Europe. During the 
same year Mr. Greeley served a three months' term in 
Congress, signalizing himself by a persistent series of 
attacks both in the House and in his paper, on the ex- 
isting practice in computing and paying mileage — a 
comparatively petty swindle, mean enough doubtless, 
in itself, but very far from being the national evil most 
prominently requiring a remedy. This proceeding 
made Mr. Greeley a number of enemies, gained him 
some inefficient approbations, and did not cure the 
evil. In 1857 he went to Europe, to seethe " Crystal 
Palace " or World's Fair at London, in that year. He 
was a member of one of the "juries" which distrib- 
uted premiums on that occasion ; investigated indus- 
trial life in England with some care ; and gave some 
significant and influential information about newspaper 
matters, in testifying before a parliamentary commit- 
tee on the repeal of certain oppressive taxes on news- 
papers. He made a short trip to France and Italy ; 
and on his return home, reaching the dock at New 
York about 6 A. M., he had already made up the 
matter for an " extra," while on board the steamer. 



MR. GREELEY AS WHIG AND REPUBLICAN. 309 

He rushed at once to the office, seizing the opportunity 
to " beat " the other morning papers, by an " exclu- 
sive" extra, sent off for the compositors, who had all 
gone to bed at their homes ; began setting up the mat- 
ter himself; worked away along with the rest until his 
exclusive extra was all ready, and then departed con- 
tentedly to his own home. 

Mr. Greeley had always been a natural abolitionist ; 
but, with most of the Whig party, he had been wil- 
ling to allow the question of slavery to remain in a 
secondary position for a long time. He was however 
a willing, early, vigorous and useful member of the 
Republican party, when that party became an unavoid- 
able national necessity, as the exponent of Freedom. 
With that party he labored hard during the Fremont 
campaign, through the times of the Kansas wars, and 
for the election of Mr. Lincoln. When the Rebellion 
broke out he stood by the nation to the best of his 
ability, and if he gave mistaken counsels at any time, 
his mistakes were the unavoidable results of his men- 
tal organization, and not in the least due to any con- 
scious swerving from principle, either in ethics or in 
politics. 

Mr. Greeley has at various times been spoken of as 
a candidate for State offices, and he undoubtedly has a 
certain share of ambition for high political position — 
an ambition which is assuredly entitled to be excused 
if not respected by American citizens. Yet any sound 
mind, it is believed, must be forced to the belief that 
his highest and fittest place is the Chief Editor's chair 
in the office of The Tribune. There he wields a great, 
a laboriously and honestly acquired influence, an in- 



310 HORACE GREELEY. 

fiuence of the greatest importance to Society. His 
friends would be sorry to see him leave that station 
for any other. 

Mr. Greeley's character and career as an editor and 
politician can be understood and appreciated by re- 
membering his key note : — Benevolent ends, by utilita- 
rian means. 

He desires the amelioration of all human conditions 
and the instrumentalities which he would propose are 
generally practical, common sense ones. Of mag- 
nificence, of formalities, of all the conventional part 
of life, whether in public or private, he is by na- 
ture as utterly neglectful as he is of the dandy element 
in costume, but he has a solid and real appreciation of 
many appreciable things, which go to make up the 
sum total of human advancement and happiness. 




Eag *-bv 



CHAPTER VIE 
DAVID GLASCOE FARRAGUT. 



The Lesson of the Rebellion to Monarchs — The Strength of the United States — 
The U S. Naval Service— The Last War— State of the Navy in 1861 — 
Admiral Farragut Represents the Old Navy and the New — Charlemagne's 
Physician, Farraguth — The Admiral's Letter about his Family — His Birth — 
His Cruise with Porter when a Boy of Nine — The Destruction of the Essex — 
Farragut in Peace Times — Expected to go with the South — Refuses, is Threat- 
ened, and goes North — The Opening of the Mississippi — The Bay Fight at 
Mobile — The Admiral's Health — Farragut and the Tobacco Bishop. 



The course and character and result of the Rebell- 
ion taught many a great new lesson ; in political mor- 
als and in political economy ; in international law ; in 
the theory of governing; in the significance of just prin- 
ciples on this earth. Perhaps all those lessons, taught 
so tremendously to the civilized world, might be 
summed in one expression ; the Astounding Strength 
of a Christian Republic. For, whichever phase of the 
Rebellion we examine in considering it as a chapter of 
novelties in the world's history, we still come back to 
that one splendid, heart-filling remembrance ; — How un- 
expected, how unbelieved, how inexhaustible, how 
magnificent beyond all history, the strength of the 
United States ! 

"There goes your Model Republic," sneered all the 

Upper Classes of Europe, " knocked into splinters in 

the course of one man's life ! A good riddance ! " 

And reactionary Europe set instantly to work to league 

311 20 



312 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

itself with our own traitors, now that the United 
States was dead, to bury it effectively. But the Im- 
perial Republic, even more utterly unconscious than 
its enemies, of what it could suffer and could do, 
stunned at first and reeling under a blow the most 
tremendous ever aimed at any government, clung 
close to Right and Justice, and rising in its own blood, 
went down wounded as it was, into the thunder and 
the mingled blinding lightning and darkness of the 
great conflict, unknowing and unfearing whether life 
or death was close before. As its day, so was its 
strength. As the nation's need grew deeper and more 
desperate, in like measure the nation's courage, the 
conscious calmness, the unmoved resolution, the 
knowledge of strength and wealth and power, grew 
more high and strong, and whetfeas the world knew 
that no nation had ever survived such an assault, and 
knew, it said, that ours would not, lo and behold, 
the United States achieved things beyond all compar- 
ison more unheard of, more wonderful, than even the 
treasonable explosion for whose deadly catastrophe all 
the monarchists stood joyfully waiting. They were 
disappointed. And ever since, they know that if the 
Rebellion was not the death-toll of Republics, it was 
the death-toll of many other things, and ever since, all 
the kings are setting their houses in order. 

There were three great national material instrumen- 
talities which the Free Christian People of the United 
States created in their peril, being the sole means which 
could have won in the war, and being moreover ex- 
actly the means which England and Europe asserted 
that we were peculiarly unable to create or to use ; 



THE NAVY IN 1861. 313 

they were : the Supply of Money ; the Army on the 
land, and the Fleet on the sea. 

Of these three, the story of the fleet has a peculiar 
interest of its own. The United States Navy was 
always a popular service in the country, for the adven- 
turous genius and inventive faculties of our people, 
developed and stimulated by its successful prosecution 
of commerce, had easily dealt with the naval prob- 
lems of fifty years ago. In the war of 1812, the su- 
perior skill of our shipbuilders and sailors launched 
and navigated a small but swift and powerful and well 
managed navy, and the single common-sense applica- 
tion of sights for aiming, to our ship -guns, in like man- 
ner as to muskets, gave our sailors a murderous supe- 
riority in sea fights which won us many a victory. 

But in times of peace, a free nation almost necessa- 
rily falls behind a standing army nation in respect of 
military and naval mechanism and stored material and 
readiness of organization ; and accordingly, after forty 
years of little but disuse, our navy, as the muscles of 
an arm shrink away if it is left unmoved, showed little 
of the latest improvements in construction and arma- 
ment, and indeed there was very little navy to show 
at all. At Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, the whole navy 
of the United States consisted of seventy-six vessels, 
carrying 1,783 guns ; and of these, only twelve were 
within reach, so effectively had Mr. Buchanan's Secre- 
tary of the Navy, Toucey, dispersed them in readiness 
for the secession schemes of his fellows in the cabinet. 
And even of those twelve, but a few were in Northern 
ports. The navy conspirators had no mind to have a 
southern blockade brought down on them, and so took 



314 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

good care to send our best ships on long fancy voy- 
ages to Japan or otherwhere — and to clap on board 
of them certain officers whose loyalty and ability they 
wished to put out of the way. Thus General Ripley 
found himself, to his indignation, over in Asia when 
the explosion took place. 

It was from this beginning — practically nothing — 
that the energy and skill of American inventors and 
seamen created a navy beyond comparison the strong- 
est on the face of the earth, reaching a strength of 600 
ships, and 51,000 men; which effectively maintained 
the most immense and difficult blockade of history ; 
which performed with brilliant and glorious success, 
enterprises whose importance and danger are equal to 
any chronicled in the wonderful annals of the sea ; 
which fully completed its own indispensable share in 
the work of subduing the rebellion ; and which rev- 
olutionized the theory and practice of naval warfare. 

In this chapter of the history of the navy the most 
famous name is that of Admiral Farragut, not so- much 
in consequence of any identification with the mechan- 
ical inventions of the day, as because his past profes- 
sional career and his recent brilliant and daring victo- 
ries, have linked together the elder with the younger 
fame of our navy, and have done it by the exercise of 
professional and personal courage and skill, rather than 
by the ingenious use of newly discovered scientific 
auxiliaries. The hardy courage of unmailed breasts 
always appeals more strongly to admiration and sympa- 
thy, than that more thoughtful and doubtless wiser pro- 
ceeding which would win fights from behind invul- 
nerable protections. 



ADMIRAL FARRAGUT'S FAMILY. 315 

A friend of the writer was, during the Rebellion, 
investigating some subject connected with the history 
of medicine. In one of the books he examined he 
found mention made of Charlemagne's physician, a 
wonderfully skilful and learned man, named Farraguth. 
Our famous Admiral was then in the Gulf of Mexico, 
engaged in the preparations for the attack on Mobile 
which took place during August of that year. So odd 
was this coincidence, that its discoverer wrote to the 
Admiral to ask whether he knew anything of this med- 
iaeval doctor, and received in reply a very friendly 
and agreeably written letter, from which some extracts 
may here be given without any violation of confidence, 
as giving the most authentic information about his an- 
cestry. 

"My own name is probably Castilian. My grand- 
father came from Ciudadela, in the island of Minorca. 
I know nothing of the history of my family before 
they came to this country and settled in Florida. You 
may remember that in the 17th century, a colony set- 
tled there, and among them, I believe, was my grand- 
father. My father served through the war of Inde- 
pendence, and was at the battle of the Cowpens. 
Judge Anderson, formerly Comptroller of the Treas- 
urer, has frequently told me that my father received 
his majority from George Washington on the same day 
with himself; and his children have always supposed 
that this promotion was for his good conduct in that 
fight. Notwithstanding this statement * * * * 
I have never been able to find my father's name in any 
list of the officers of the Revolution. 



316 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

" With two men, Ogden and McKee, lie was after- 
wards one of the early settlers of Tennessee. Mr. 
McKee was a member of Congress from Alabama, and 
once stopped in Norfolk, where I was then residing, on 
purpose, as he said, to see me, as the son of his early 
friend. He said he had heard that I was u a chip of 
the old block " — what sort of a block it was I know not. 
This was thirty years ago. My father settled twelve 
miles from Knoxville, at a place called Campbell's Sta- 
tion, on the river, where Burnside had his fight. 
Thence we moved to the South, about the time of the 
Wilkinson and Blennerhassett trouble. My father was 
then appointed a master in the Navy, and sent to New 
Orleans in command of one of the gunboats. Hence 
the impression that I am a native of New Orleans. 
But all my father's children were born in Tennessee, 
and as I have said in' answer to enquiries on this sub- 
ject, we only moved South to crush out a couple of 
rebellions. 

" My mother died of yellow fever the first summer in 
New Orleans, and my father setttled at Pascagoula, in 
Mississippi. He continued to serve throughout the 
' last war,' and was at the battle of New Orleans, un- 
der Commodore Paterson, though very infirm at that 
time. He died the following year, and my brothers 
and sisters married in and about New Orleans, where 
their descendants still remain. 

" As to the name, Gen. Goicouria, a Spanish hidalgo 
from Cuba, tells me it is Castilian, and is spelled in the 
same way as the old physician's — Farraguth." 

Admiral David Glascoe Farragut was born at Camp- 
bell's Station, in East Tennessee, in 1801. While only 



FARRAGUTS CRUISE WITH PORTER. 317 

a little boy, at nine years of age, his father, who had 
been a friend and shipmate of the hardy sea-king, Com- 
modore Porter, procured him a midshipman's berth 
under that commander, and the boy, accompanying 
Porter in the romantic cruise of the Essex, served a 
right desperate apprenticeship to his hazardous pro- 
fession. His first sea-fight was the short fierce combat 
of Porter in the Essex, on April 13th, 1812, with the 
English sloop-of-war, Alert. No sooner did the Alert 
spy the Essex, than she ran confidently close upon her 
weather quarter, and with three cheers opened her 
broadside. Porter, not a whit abashed, replied with 
such swift fury that the Englishman, smashed into drown- 
ing helplessness, and with seven feet of water in his 
hold, struck his colors in eight minutes, escaping out 
of the fight by surrender even more hastily than he 
had gone into it. 

In that desperate and bloody fight in Valparaiso 
harbor, when the British captain Hillyar, with double 
the force of the Essex, and by means of a most dis- 
creditable breach of the law of neutrality, made an 
end of the Essex, Midshipman Farragut, twelve 
years of age, stood by his commander to the very last. 
When those who could swim ashore had been ordered 
overboard, Porter himself, having helped work the 
few remaining guns that could be fired, hauled down 
his flag, and surrendered the bloody wreck that was 
all he had left under him, for the sake of the helpless 
wounded men who must have sunk along with him. 
Farragut was wounded, and was sent home with the 
other officers of the ship, on parole ; and Porter, in 
his report to the Secretary of the Navy, made special 



318 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

and honorable mention of the lad, and mentioned with 
the appropriate regret of a just and brave man, that 
the boy was "too young for promotion." Probably 
not another living man on the face of the earth had 
so early and so thorough a baptism of blood and fire, 
and bore himself through it so manlike. 

Commodore Porter had been so much interested in 
the youth that he gave him the means of pursuing an 
education in general studies and military tactics. But 
Farragut's vocation was the sea, and as soon as the 
war was over he got another ship. Peace is the win- 
ter of soldiers and sailors ; when they sit still and wait 
for the deadly harvest that brings them prosperity. 
The times were as dull for Farragut as for the rest, 
and for forty-five years he was sailing about the world 
or quietly commanding at one or another station, and at 
long intervals rising by seniority from one grade to 
another. In 1825 he became lieutenant, in 1841 com- 
mander, in 1851 captain. When the rebellion came 
he was sixty years old, had been in the service forty- 
eight years, and to the country at large was utterly 
unknown. This is not strange ; for throughout all his 
youth and manhood he had had no opportunity to 
show the heroic qualities which when a boy of twelve 
he had proved himself to possess even then in such 
manly measure. 

He was living at Norfolk; was a native of the 
South ; and his second wife, with whom he was now 
living, was from a Norfolk family. It was therefore 
taken for granted that Farragut would go with the 
South, and when he frankly avowed his patriotism, he 
was met with astonishment and then with threats. 



THE OPENING OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 319 

They told liim it would probably be unsafe for him to 
remain in the South, with such sentiments. "Very 
well," he replied, "I will go where I can live with 
such sentiments." Accordingly, he left Norfolk for 
the North on the night of April 18, 1861, the very 
night before the rebels there fired the navy -yard. He 
established himself for a time near Tarrytown, on the 
Hudson river. The very air was full of suspicion in 
those days, and Captain Farragut being unknown to 
the people in the vicinity, and walking about in the 
fields alone a good deal, a report got out at one time 
among the neighbors that he was one of a gang that 
had arranged to cut the Croton Aqueduct and burn 
down New York. 

Farragut's very first appointment was that to the 
command of the naval part of the New Orleans expe- 
dition, for which his orders reached him January 20, 
1862, and on Feb. 3d, in his famous flag-ship, the 
Hartford, he sailed from Hampton Roads for Ship 
Island. 

The opening of the Mississippi river has passed 
into history. Of all the series of strange and novel 
and desperate combats which accomplished the task, 
the passage of the forts and the capture of New Or- 
leans was beyond comparison the most dangerous and 
difficult, and its success was the most brilliant. The 
services which succeeded this were less showy, but 
included much that was excessively laborious, and 
that was dangerous enough for any ordinary ambition ; 
and from beginning to end the whole task required 
not only high courage, indefatigable activity, inces- 
sant labor, and the ordinary professional knowledge 



320 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

of a sailor, but an invention always ready to contrive 
new means for new ends, prompt judgment to adopt 
them if suggested by others, wisdom and tact in deal- 
ing with the rebel authorities, and patience in waiting 
for the co-operation of the military forces or the de- 
velopment of the plans of the government. In carry- 
ing his fleet past Port Hudson and Vicksburg, in help- 
ing Grant to cross the river and take the latter place, 
in all his operations, whether alone or with the land 
commanders, Admiral Farragut gave proof of the pos- 
session of all these qualities. 

The "Bay Fight" at Mobile, and the resulting cap- 
ture of Forts Powell and Gaines, was another scene as 
terrible as New Orleans, and still more splendidly 
illuminated by the perfect personal courage of the 
Admiral, who has already gone into history, song and 
painting, as he stood lashed in the rigging of the old 
Hartford, clear above the smoke of the battle, and, 
even when he saw the monitor Tecumseh sunk — the 
very ship he had been waiting for for months — yet 
ordered his wooden fleet straight forward despite forts, 
gunboats, ram and torpedoes, and won a second vic- 
tory of that most glorious sort only possible to the 
high, clear and intelligent courage of a leader who is 
both truly heroic and truly wise. 

The fame which the Admiral earned in the war has 
been in some measure paid him, in the testimonials of 
admiration and respect which he has received both at 
home and abroad. It would require a book to give 
account of the greetings and the thanks he has re- 
ceived from his own countrymen ; and on the official 
voyage which he has made since the war to the prin- 



FARRAGUT AND THE TOBACCO BISHOP. 321 

cipal ports of Europe, as the representative of the 
naval power of the United States. The civilities and 
attentions conferred upon himself and his officers, were 
not solely that formal politeness which one nation ob- 
serves to another, but were in large measure the more 
enthusiastic acknowledgment which men pay to lofty 
personal qualities. 

Admiral Farragut is a man of remarkably pure and 
vigorous health, and though no longer young, is more 
elastic, vigorous and enduring than most young men. 
His health and strength are the just recompense for a 
cleanly and temperate life. He seems to have that 
sort of innate or constitutional abhorrence for every 
unclean thing, which has characterized some great re- 
formers. There is a pleasant story of a rebuke once 
administered by him in a most neat and decorous, but 
very effective manner, to a tobacco-smoking bishop, 
which conveys a good lesson. . At dinner with Farra- 
gut, and after the meal was over, the Bishop, about to 
select a cigar, offered the bunch to the sailor. "Have a 
cigar, Admiral?" said he. "No, Bishop," said the 
Admiral, with a quizzical glance, "I don't smoke — / 
swear a little, sometimes.'''' 

We regret that the limits of our sketches do not 
allow us to do justice to those wonderful, inspiring, 
romantic scenes by which our navy gained possession 
of New Orleans and Mobile. But if one wants to 
read them in poetry, terse and vivid, with all the fire 
of poetry and all the explicitness of prose, we beg 
them to read the "River Fight," and "Bay Fight," of 
Henry Brownell, who was in both scenes as a volunteer 



322 DAVID G. FARRAGUT. 

officer. There lie will find Homeric military ardor 
baptized by Christian sentiment. 

Full red the furnace fires must glow, 

That melts the ore of mortal kind; 
The mills of God are grinding slow, 

But ah, how close they grind ! 
To-day the Dahlgren and the drum 

Are dread Apostles of his name, 
His kingdom here can only come 

In chrism of blood and flame. 



CHAPTEK IX. 

JOHN ALBION ANDREW. 

Governor Andrew's Death Caused by the War — The Governors Dr. Beecher 
Prayed for — Governor Andrew a Christian Governor — Gov. Andrew's Birth — 
He goes to Boston to Study Law — Not Averse to Unfashionable and Unpopu- 
lar Causes — His Cheerfulness and Social Accomplishments — His Sunday 
School Work — Lives Plainly — His Clear Foresight of the War — Sends a 
Thousand Men to Washington in One Day — Stoiy of the Blue Overcoats — 
The Telegram for the Bodies of the Dead of Baltimore — Gov. Andrew's Ten- 
der Care for the Poor — The British Minister and the Colored Women — The 
Governor's Kindness to the Soldier's Wife — His Biblical Proclamations — The 
Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1861 — The Proclamation of 1862 — His Intesest 
in the Schools for the Richmond Poor — Cotton Mather's Eulogy on Governor 
Winthrop — Gov. Andrew's Farewell Address to the Massachusetts Legislature 
— State Gratitude to Governor Andrew's Family. 

Among the many heroic men who have sacrificed 
their lives in the great battle of liberty in our country, 
there is no one who deserves a more honored memory 
than John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts. 

We speak of him as dying in battle, for it is our 
conviction that Governor Andrew was as really a vic- 
tim of the war as if, like Lincoln, he had been shot 
down by a bullet. His death was caused by an over 
tax of the brain in the critical and incessant labors of 
the five years' war. He had been previously warned 
by a physician that any such strain would expose him 
to such a result, so that in meeting the duties and exi- 
gencies of his office at the time he did, he just as cer- 
tainly knew that he was exposing himself to sudden 
death as the man who goes into battle. He did not 

325 



326 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

fail till the battle was over and the victory won, then 
with a smile of peace on his lips, he went to rest by 
the side of Lincoln. 

It was a customary form in the prayers of the Rev. 
Dr. Beecher, to offer the petition that God would 
make our "Governors as at the first, and our counsel- 
lors as at the beginning." These words, spoken with a 
yearning memory of the old days of the pilgrim 
fathers, when religion was the law of the land, and the 
laws and ordinances of Christ were the standard of 
tfoe government, found certainly a fulfillment in the 
exaltation of John A. Andrew to be the Governor of 
Massachusetts. 

It has been said of Lincoln by a French statesman 
that he presents to the world a new type of pure, 
Christian statesmanship. In the same manner it may 
be said of John A. Andrew, that he presents a type 
of a consistently Christian State Governor. 

The noble men of America who have just consum- 
mated in the 37th and 38th Congresses the sublimest 
national and moral reform the world ever saw, are the 
spiritual children of the pilgrim fathers. So are Gar- 
rison, Phillips, John Brown, and other external helpers 
in bringing on the great day of moral victory. They 
were men either tracing their descent in lineal blood 
to Puritan parentage, or like Garrison, spiritually born 
of the eternal influences which they left in the air of 
the society they moulded. 

These sons of the Puritans do not, it is true, in all 
points hold the technical creed of their ancestors, any 
more than the Puritans held the creed of the genera- 
tion just before them. Progress was the root idea 



A CHRISTIAN GOVERNOR. 327 

with the Puritans, and as they stood far in advance in 
matters of opinion, so their sons in many respects 
stand at a different line from them ; in this, quite as 
much as in anything else, proving their sonship. The 
parting charge of the old pastor Robinson to the little 
band of pilgrims was of necessity a seed of changes 
of opinion as time should develop fit causes of change. 

"If God reveal anything unto you by any other 
instrument of his, be ready to receive it as ever you 
were to receive any truth by my ministry ; for I am 
verily persuaded and confident that the Lord hath much 
truth yet to break forth from his holy word. For my 
part, I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the 
reformed churches who are come to a period in their 
religion, and will go at present no further than the 
instruments of their first reformation. The Lutherans 
cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther said ; and 
whatsoever part of his will our good God has imparted 
unto Calvin they will rather die than embrace it. And 
the Calvinists you see stick fast where they were left 
by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things." 

But that part of the Puritan idea which consisted 
in unhesitating loyalty to Jesus Christ as master in 
practical affairs, and an unflinching determination to 
apply his principles and precepts to the conduct of so- 
ciety, and to form and reform all things in the state by 
them, was that incorruptible seed which has descended 
from generation to generation in Massachusetts, and 
shown itself in the course of those noble men who 
have brought on and carried through the late great 
revolution. This recent conflict has been in fact a 
great revival of religion, by which the precepts of the 



328 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

Sermon on the Mount have been established in polit- 
ical forms. 

John Albion Andrew was born in the little town of 
Windham, Cumberland county, Maine. It was like 
the most of the nests where New England greatness 
is hatched — a little, cold, poor, barren mountain town, 
where the winter rages for six months of the year. 
We hear of him in these days as a sunny-faced, curly- 
headed boy, full of fun and frolic and kind-hearted- 
ness, and we can venture to say how he pattered bare- 
footed after the cows in the dim grey of summer 
mornings, how he was forward to put on the tea-kettle 
for mother, and always inexhaustible in obligingness, 
how in winter he drew the girls to school on his sled, 
and was doughty and valiant in defending snow forts, 
and how his arm and prowess were always for the 
weak against the strong and for the right against the 
wrong. All these inherent probabilities might be 
wrought into myths and narratives, which would truly 
represent the boy who was father to the man, John 
A. Andrew. 

He graduated from Bowdoin College in the class of 
1837, and came to Boston to study law in the office 
of Henry H. Fuller, whence in 1840, he was admitted 
to the bar. 

During the earlier portions of his educational career, 
both in college and at the bar, he had no very brilliant 
successes. He had little ambition to dazzle or shine, 
or seek for immediate effect ; he was indifferent to 
academic honors, his heart and mind being set upon 
higher things. He read and studied broadly and 
carefully, in reference to his whole manhood rather 



NOT AVERSE TO UNFASHIONABLE CAUSES. 329 

than to the exigencies of a passing occasion. Besides 
his legal studies, he was a widely read belles-lettres 
student, and his memory was most retentive of all 
sorts of literature, grave and gay, tragic and comic. 
He was one that took the journey of life in a leisurely 
way, stopping to admire prospects and to gather the 
flowers as he went on. 

From the very earliest of his associations in Boston, 
he allied himself not only with popular and acceptable 
forms of philanthropy, but also with those which were 
under the ban of polite society. One who knew him 
well says : " Few men were connected with so many 
unpopular and unfashionable causes. Indeed, it was 
only sufficient to know that an alliance with any cause 
was considered to involve some loss of social caste, or 
business patronage, to be pretty sure that John A. 
Andrew was allied with it." 

His cheerful, jovial spirit, and the joyousness with 
which he accepted the reproach of a cause, took from 
it the air of martyrdom. His exquisite flow of natu- 
ral humor oiled and lubricated the play of his moral 
faculties, so that a gay laugh instead of an indignant 
denunciation would be the weapon with which he 
would meet injurious language or treatment heaped 
on him for conscience sake. Like Lincoln, he had the 
happy faculty of being able to laugh where crying 
did no good, and the laughter of some good men, we 
doubt not, is just as sacred in heavenly eyes as the 
tears of others. They who tried to put men under so- 
ciety's ban for their conscientious opinions, got loss on 
their own side in excluding Andrew, since no man had 
in a higher degree all the arts and faculties of agreeable- 
21 



330 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

ness in society. No man had a wider or more varied 
flow of conversation. No man could tell a better 
story or sing a gayer song. No man was more gifted 
with that electrical power of animal cheerfulness, 
which excites others to gayety and mirth. In the in- 
tervals of the gravest cases, when pressed down, over- 
whelmed, and almost bewildered, he would still find 
spare hours when at the bedside of some desponding 
invalid, or in the cheerless chamber of old age, he 
would make all ring again with a flow of mimicry and 
wit and fun, as jolly as a bob-o-link on a clover head. 

Some of the most affecting testimonials to his worth 
come from these obscure and secluded sources. One 
aged friend of seventy or more, tells how daily, amid 
all the cares of the state house and the war, he found 
some interval to come in and shed a light and cheer- 
fulness in her shaded chamber. 

His pastor speaks of him as performing the duties 
of a Sunday school superintendent during the labors 
of his arduous station. He was a lover of children 
and young people, and love made labor light. While 
he did not hesitate, when necessary, to carry forward 
the great public cause on the Sabbath day, yet his 
heart and inclinations ever inclined him to the more 
purely devotional uses of those sacred hours. The 
flame of devotion in his heart was ever burning be- 
neath the crust of earthly cares, but ready to flame 
up brightly in those hours consecrated by the tradi- 
tions of his Puritan education. 

In one respect Governor Andrew was not patterned 
on the old first magistrates of Massachusetts. Massa- 
chusetts was at first decidedly an aristocratic commu- 



LIVES PLAINLY. 331 

nity. A certain of idea rank and stateliness hedged in 
the office of the governor. He stood above the peo- 
ple at an awful distance and moved among them as a 
sort of superior being. 

Nothing could be more opposed to the frank, com- 
panionable nature of Governor Andrew than any such 
idea. He was a true democrat to the tips of his finger 
nails, and considered a Governor only as the servant 
of the people. In this respect, more truly than 
even the first Puritan governors, did he express the 
idea given by Christ of rank and dignity, "Whosoev- 
er will be chief among you let him be your servant." 

Governor Andrew from the first rejected and dis- 
claimed everything which seemed to mark him out 
from the people by outward superiority. He chose to 
live in a small, plain house, in a retired and by no 
means fashionable part of the city, and to conduct all 
his family arrangements on a scale of the utmost sim- 
plicity. When the idea was suggested to him that 
the Governor of Massachusetts ought to have some 
extra provision to enable him to appear with more 
worldly pomp and stateliness, he repelled it with en- 
ergy, "Never, while the country was struggling under 
such burdens, and her brave men bearing such priva- 
tions in the field, would he accept of anything more 
than the plain average comforts of a citizen." The 
usual traditional formulas and ceremonials of his posi- 
tion were only irksome and embarrassing to him. One 
of his aids relates that being induced by urgent solic- 
itation to have the accustomed military coat of the 
Governor of Massachusetts, with all its gold lace and 
buttons, he wore it twice, and then returning with his 



332 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

aids to his private cabinet, he pulled it off and threw 
it impatiently into a corner, saying, "Lie there, old 
coat — you won't find me wearing you again, soon." 
The ceremonies on public occasions were always irk- 
some and fatiguing to him, and he would recreate 
himself by singing "Johnny Schmauker" with his aids 
in his private apartments afterwards. We think good 
Governor Winthrop would have rolled up his eyes in 
horror at such carelessness of etiquette and station. 

As a public man, Governor Andrew was distin- 
guished for quickness, perspicasity, and energy. The 
electric, social element of his being made him an 
apt reader of human nature, and gave him that 
prophetic insight into what would arise from the do- 
ings of men, which enabled him to see afar off and 
provide for possible emergencies. Thus at the time 
he was appointed Governor, nothing was farther from 
the thoughts of the body of Northern men than that 
there could ever be really and in fact a war in Amer- 
ica. All the war talk and war threats that had come 
from the South had been pleasantly laughed at, as 
mere political catch words and nursery tales meant to 
frighten children. 

But Andrew felt the atmosphere chilling with the 
coming storm, and from the moment of his election, 
he began making active preparations for war, which 
were at the time as much laughed at as Noah's for the 
flood. 

But the time came which the laughers and skeptics 
said would not come, and behold on the 15th of April, 
the President's requisition for troops ! Thanks to the 
previous steps taken by Governor Andrew, the Mas- 



FIRST UNIFORMED REGIMENT IN WASHINGTON. 333 

sachusetts sixth regiment started from Boston in the 
afternoon of the 17th, leaving the 4th all but ready to 
follow. Only one day was necessary to get a thousand 
men started — and this company was the first that en- 
tered Washington in uniform and with all the moral 
effect of uniformed soldiers. This leads us to the 
celebrated story of the blue overcoats, which is this : 
Shortly after Lincoln's election, Benjamin F. Butler 
took tea with Jefferson Davis in Washington, and there 
satisfied himself in personal conversation that a war 
must be the result of the machinations that were go- 
ing on. He posted to Boston and communicated what 
he knew to Governor Andrew, who immediately called 
a secret session of the legislature in which he told the 
crisis and asked for an appropriation to get troops in 
readiness. They voted twenty -five thousand dollars 
which Governor Andrew put into arms, ammunition 
and stores for an immediate equipment for the field. 
Among other things, he had two or three thousand 
army overcoats made and stored in the State house. 

When the call came, the sixth regiment had not half 
a quota, but was immediately made up by the fiery zeal 
of enlisting citizens, who contended for places and 
even paid large bounties to buy the chance to go. 
They came into Boston an army of zealous new re- 
cruits. The Governor uniformed them at one stroke 
with his overcoats, and had each man's outfit ready for 
him so that in one day they were marching from Bos- 
ton to 'the capital ; and in six days, on Sunday, he was 
able to announce to the government that the whole 
quota of men required of Massachusetts were already 



334 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

either in Washington or in Fortress Monroe, on their 
way thither. 

When news came back of the fight in Baltimore, 
and the murder of some of his brave men, Andrew 
sent a telegram which showed that if he did not care 
to wear the uniform of a Massachusetts Governor, he 
knew how to assert the honor of Massachusetts, and to 
make other States feel that she had a Chief Magistrate 
in whose sight the bloocl of every Massachusetts man 
was sacred. 

He telegraphed to the Mayor of Baltimore : 

" I pray you let the bodies of our Massachusetts 
soldiers, dead in Baltimore, be laict out, preserved in ice, 
and tenderly sent forward by express to me. All ex- 
penses will be paid by the commonwealth." 

The tender and fatherly feeling expressed in this 
telegram is the key note to all Governor Andrew's con- 
duct of the war. Though he would not waste one 
cent on the trappings of rank, or his own personal dig- 
nity or convenience, he gave unlimited orders for 
marks of tender and delicate devotion to even the re- 
mains of the brave who had fallen for their country. 

In the same manner he gave himself no rest, in his 
labors for the families of the brave men who were in 
the field. This interest was the deeper, the humbler 
the walk in life of its objects. 

The British minister, Sir Frederick Bruce, once 
called upon him at the State House, and found the 
room nearly filled with colored women who had come 
to hear news of fathers, brothers and sons enlisted in 
the black regiments of Massachusetts. He waited pa- 
tiently while the Governor inquired into the sorrows 



THE BRITISH MINISTER AND THE COLORED WOMEN. 335 

and grievances, and listened to the perplexities of these 
poor anxious souls, and tried in his hopeful cheery way 
to smooth away difficulties and inspire hope. It was 
not till the humblest and poorest had had their say, 
that the turn of the British Minister came, who, as he 
shook the Governor's hand, said that^he scene before 
him had given him a new idea of the paternal char- 
acter of a Republican Government. 

Of a like nature is another anecdote, one of many 
which since the Governor's death, have risen like flow- 
ers upon his grave. 

A poor woman, the wife of a soldier, came to his 
room to have some business done in relation to the 
pension of a poorer sister. The Governor told her 
that her application must be made at another bureau 
in another part of the State house. Observing some- 
thing of delicacy and timidity in her air, he asked her 
where she lived and finding it out of Boston, enquired 
if she had any friends or relations in the city with 
whom she could rest during the hours before the open- 
ing of the office. Finding that she was utterly a stran- 
ger in Boston, and evidently in delicate health, the 
Governor provided her a sofa in a private nook and 
told her to rest herself, and offered her from his own 
frugal stores a glass of wine and a cracker for refresh- 
ment. The fatherly kindness and consideration of his 
manner was more even, than the favors he gave. 

His sympathy with the soldiers in the field was a 
sort of personal identification. He put himself into 
the Massachusetts army and could say as Paul said of 
the churches: "who is weak, and I am not weak ? who 



336 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

is offended, and I burn not ? " One incident illustrative 
of this is thus related by Edwin Whipple in his eulogy: 

Receiving, in the depth of winter, an urgent request 
from the War Office that # regiment, not yet properly 
equipped, should be sent immediately to Washington, 
he despatched jj; on the assurance that all its wants 
should be supplied on its arrival. Hearing that it had 
been stopped on the way, and that it was undergoing 
cruel privations, he started instantly for the camp, de- 
termined at least to share the misery he might not be 
able to relieve ; and he would not budge an inch until 
the regiment was sent on to its destination. Indeed 
he would have blushed to enter heaven, carrying thith- 
er the thought that he had regarded his own comfort 
rather than the least duty he owed to the poorest sol- 
dier-citizen. 

The proclamations of Governors, Presidents and 
public men have generally been mere stately general- 
ities and formalities. But with the great stirring of the 
deeper religious feelings of the community, these papers 
on the part of our public men have become individual 
and human — animated by a deeply religious spirit. 

The proclamations of Governor Andrew for the 
usual State Thanksgivings and fasts, customary in Mas- 
sachusetts were peculiar and unusual documents, and 
show more than any thing else how strongly the spirit 
and traditions of his old Puritan ancestry wrought in 
him, and how completely his mind was permeated with 
the Hebraistic imagery of the Old Testament. 

His first thanksgiving proclamation after the com- 
mencement of the war, is a document worth preserv- 
ing entire. 



HIS OLD TESTAMENT PROCLAMATIONS. 337 

" By His Excellency John A. Andrew, Governor ; A proclama- 
tion for a day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise. 

" The example of the Fathers, and the dictates of pi- 
ety and gratitude, summon the people of Massachu- 
setts, at this, the harvest season, .crowning the year 
with the rich proofs of the Wisdom and Love of God, 
to join in a solemn and joyful act of united Praise and 
Thanksgiving to the Bountiful Giver of every good 
and perfect gift. 

"I do, therefore, with the advice and consent of the 
Council, appoint Thursday, the twenty -first day of No- 
vember next — the same being the anniversary of that 
day, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and 
twenty, on which the Pilgrims of Massachusetts, on 
board the May Flower, united themselves in a solemn 
and written compact of government — to be observed 
by the people of Massachusetts as a day of Public 
Thanksgiving and Praise. And I invoke its observ- 
ance by all people with devout and religious joy. 

" Sing aloud unto God, our strength ; make a joyful 
noise unto the God of Jacob. 

" Take a Psalm and bring hither the timbrel, the pleas- 
ant harp with psaltery. 

"Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time 
appointed, on our solemn feast day. 

" For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the 
God of Jacob. Psalms 81, v. 1 to 4. 

" bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of 
his praise to be heard : 

" Which holdeth our soul in life, and suffereth not our 
feet to be moved. 



338 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

11 For thou, God, hath proved us ; thou hast tried 
us, as silver is tried. Psalms 6Q, v. 8 and 9. 

" Let us rejoice in God and be thankful for the fulness 
with which he has blessed us in our basket and in our 
store, giving large rewards to the toil of the husband- 
man, so that ' our paths drop fatness.' 

" For the many and gentle alleviations of the hard- 
ships which in the present time of public disorder have 
afflicted the various pursuits of industry. 

"For the early evidence of the reviving energies of 
the business of the people : 

"For the measure of success which has attended the 
enterprise of those who go down to the sea in ships, 
of those who search the depths of the ocean to add to 
the food of man, and of those whose busy skill and 
handicraft combine to prepare for various use the crops 
of the earth and sea : 

"For the advantages of sound learning, placed with- 
in the reach of all children of the people, and the free- 
dom and alacrity with which these advantages are em- 
braced and improved : 

" For the opportunities of religious instruction and 
worship, universally enjoyed by consciences untram- 
melled by any human authority : 

"For the redemption of the world by Jesus Christ, 
for the means of grace and the hope of glory : 

" And with one accord let us bless and praise God for 
the oneness of heart, mind and purpose in which he 
has united the people of this ancient Commonwealth 
for the defence of the rights, liberties, and honor, of 
our beloved country. 



SUMMARY OF ANTI-SLAVERY LEGISLATION. 339 

"May we stand forever in the same mind, remember- 
ing the devoted lives of our fathers, the precious in- 
heritance of freedom received at their hands, the 
weight of glory which awaits the faithful, and the in- 
finity of blessing which it is our privilege, if we will, 
to transmit to the countless generations of the future. 

"And while our tears flow, in a stream of cordial 
sympathy, with the daughters of our people, just now 
bereft, by the violence of the wicked and rebellious, of 
the fathers and husbands aud brothers and sons, whose 
heroic blood has made verily sacred the soil of Virginia, 
and mingling with the waters of the Potomac, has 
made the river now and forever ours ; let our souls 
arise to God on the wings of Praise, in thanksgiving 
that He has again granted to us the privilege of living 
unselfishly, and of dying nobly, in a grand and right- 
eous cause : 

" For the precious and rare possession of so much de- 
voted valor and heroism : 

" For the sentiment of pious duty which distinguished 
our fathers in the camp and in the field : 

" And for the sweet and blessed consolations which 
accompany the memories of these dear sons of Massa- 
chusetts on to immortality : 

"And in our praise let us also be penitent. Let us 
'seek the truth and ensue it,' and prepare our minds 
for whatever duty shall be manifested hereafter. 

" May the controversy in which we stand be found 
worthy in its consummation of the heroic sacrifices of 
the people and the precious blood of their sons, of the 
doctrine and faith of the fathers, and consistent with 
the honor of God and with justice to all men. 



340 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

"And, 

" ' Let God arise, let his enemies be scattered ; let 
them also that hate him, flee before him.' 

" ' As smoke is driven away, so drive those away.' 
Psalms, 68, v. 1 and 2. 

" ' Scatter them by thy power, and bring them down, 
Lord, our shield.' Psalms, 59, v. 11. 

Given at the Council Chamber, this thirty-first day 
of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight 
hundred and sixty-one, and the eighty-sixth of the 
Independence of the United States of America. 

JOHN A. ANDREW. 
" By His Excellency the Governor, with the advice 

and consent of the Council. 

Oliver Warner, Secretary. 

"God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 

The next year, 1862, the annual thanksgiving proc- 
lamation has the following characteristic close : 

"Rising to the height of our great occasion, re-en- 
forced by courage, conviction and faith, it has been 
the privilege of our country to perceive, in the work- 
ings of Providence, the opening ways of a sublime 
Duty. And to Him who hath never deserted the 
faithful, unto Him 'who gathereth together the out- 
casts of Israel, who healeth the broken in heart,' we 
owe a new song of thanksgiving. 'He sheweth his 
word unto Jacob, his statutes and his judgments unto 
Israel. He has not dealt so with any nation.' 

"Putting aside all fear of man, which bringeth a 
snare, may this people put on the strength which is 
the divine promise and gift to the faithful and obedi- 



HIS INTEREST IN THE RICHMOND POOR. 341 

ent ; ' Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, 
and a two edged sword in their hand.' Not with 
malice and wickedness, but with sincerity and truth, 
let us keep this feast ; and while we ' eat the fat and 
drink the sweet, forget not to send a portion to him for 
whom nothing is prepared.' Let us remember on that 
day the claims of all who are poor, or desolate, or op- 
pressed, and pledge the devotion of our lives to the 
rescue of our country from the evils of rebellion, op- 
pression and wrong ; and may we all so order our 
conduct hereafter, that we may neither be ashamed to 
live, nor afraid to die." 

When the war was over, and the victory won, the 
generous and brotherly spirit of Governor Andrew 
showed itself in the instant outflowing of charity 
towards our misguided and suffering brethren, and he 
was one of the first and warmest to respond to the 
cry for aid to the starving thousands at the South. 
"I was for a vigorous prosecution of the war while 
there was a war," he said, "but now the war is over, 
I am for a vigorous prosecution of the peace." 

It is not generally known that the moment the na- 
tional flag made Richmond a safe place to be visited 
by northern men, teachers were at once sent from 
Boston to found a series of common schools for the 
poor white children of Richmond. The building for- 
merly employed as a laboratory for the preparing of 
torpedos and other implements of war, was converted 
into a school room for these poor vagrants, who had 
suffered from cold, hunger and neglect during the 
chances of the war. The teachers carried with them 
not only school books for the children, but gifts of 



342 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

clothing and supplies of food, whereby they carried 
comfort to many a poor family. In this most pecu- 
liarly Christian work, Governor Andrew sympathized 
deeply. His was a nature that, while it could be sur- 
passed by none in energetic resistance to wrong, was 
ever longing the rather to express itself in deeds of 
kindness. 

Governor Andrew's farewell address to the Legisla- 
ture of Massachusetts was a state paper worthy of the 
State and worthy of him. We shall make a few ex- 
tracts : 

"At the end of five years of executive administra- 
tion, I appear before a convention of the two Houses 
of her General Court, in the execution of a final duty. 
For nearly all that period, the Commonwealth, as a 
loyal State of the American Union, has been occupied 
within her sphere of co-operation, in helping to main- 
tain, by arms, the power of the nation, the liberties 
of the people, and the rights of human nature. 

"Having contributed to the army and the navy — ' 
including regulars, volunteers, seamen and marines, 
men of all arms, and officers of all grades, and of the 
various terms of service — an aggregate of one hun- 
dred and fifty-nine thousand one hundred and sixty- 
five men ; and having expended for the war, out of 
her own treasury, twenty-seven million seven hundred 
and five thousand one hundred and nine dollars, — be- 
sides the expenditures of her cities and towns, she has 
maintained, by the unfailing energy and economy of 
her sons and daughters, her industry and thrift even 
in the waste of war. She has paid promptly, and in 
gold, all interest on her bonds — including the old and 



HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS. 343 

the new — guarding her faith and honor with every pub- 
lic creditor, while still fighting the public enemy ; and 
now, at last, in retiring from her service, I confess the 
satisfaction of having first seen all of her regiments 
and batteries (save two battalions) returned and mus- 
tered out of the army ; and of leaving her treasury 
provided for, by the fortunate and profitable negotia- 
tion of all the permanent loan needed or foreseen — 
with her financial credit maintained at home and 
abroad, her public securities unsurpassed, if even 
equalled, in value in the money market of the world 
by those of any State or of the Nation. 

w w vf 7r 7T 7P 

"But, perhaps, before descending for the last time 
from this venerable seat, I may be indulged in some 
allusion to the broad field of thought and statesman- 
ship, to which the war itself has conducted us. As I 
leave the Temple where, humbled by my unworthi- 
ness, I have stood so long, like a priest of Israel 
sprinkling the blood of the holy sacrifice on the altar 
— I would fain contemplate the solemn and manly 
duties which remain to us who survive the slain, in 
honor of their memory and in obedience to God." 

The Governor then goes on to state his views of 
reconstruction, and we will say no state paper ever 
more truly expressed the Christian idea of statesman- 
ship as applied to the most profound problem of 
modern times. 

In conclusion, it seems to us that Governor Andrew 
so fully lived in the spirit of the old Christian Gov- 
ernors of Massachusetts, that the words of Cotton 
Mather, in his mourning for Governor Winthrop, fully 



344 JOHN A. ANDREW. 

apply to him: "We are now," he says, "to mourn for 
a governor who has been to us as a friend in his coun- 
sel for all things, help for our bodies by physic, for 
our estate by law, and of whom there was no fear of 
his becoming an enemy, like the friends of David ; a 
governor who hath been unto us as a brother ; not 
usurping authority over the church ; often speaking 
his advice, and often contradicted, even by young 
men, and some of low degree ; yet not replying, but 
offering satisfaction when any supposed offences have 
arisen ; a governor who has been to us as a mother, 
parent4ike distributing his goods to brethren and 
neighbors at his first coming, and gently bearing our 
infirmities without taking notice of them." 

It is pleasant to record for the honor of republics, 
that while the disinterestedness of Governor Andrew 
had left him in honorable poverty, the contributions 
of Boston and Massachusetts immediately flowed in to 
supply to his family that estate which their father's 
patriotism and devotion did not allow him to seek for 
them. There must have been thousands of grateful 
hearts in Massachusetts, in homes of comparative indi- 
gence whence have come joyful contributions to that 
testimonial of Massachusetts to her beloved and faith- 
ful citizen Governor. 



CHAPTER X. 

SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

General William Colfax, Washington's Friend — Mr. Colfax his Grandson — Mr. 
Colfax's Birth and Boyhood — Removes to Indiana — Becomes Deputy County 
Auditor — Begins to Deal with Polities — Becomes an Editor — The Period of 
Maximum Debt — Mr. Colfax's First Year — He is Burnt Out — His Subsequent 
Success as an Editor — His Political Career as a Whig — Joins the Republican 
Party — Popularity in his own District — The Nebraska Bill — Mr. Colfax goes 
into Congress — The Famous Contest for Speakership — Mr. Colfax Saves his 
Party from Defeat — Banks Chosen Speaker — Mr. Colfax's Great Speech on 
the Bogus Laws of Kansas — The Ball and Chain for Free Speech — Mr. Colfax 
Shows the Ball, and A. H. Stephens Holds it for him— Mr. Colfax Renomina- 
ted Unanimously — His Remarkable Success in his own District — Useful Labors 
in Post Office Committee — Early for Lincoln for President — Mr. Colfax urged 
for Post Master General — His Usefulness as Speaker — The Qualifications for 
that Post — Mr. Colfax's Public Virtues. 

General William Colfax, the grandfather of Hon. 
Schuyler Colfax, was a citizen of New Jersey, and 
was the commanding officer of Gen. Washington's 
life guards throughout the Revolutionary War. His 
holding that very confidential and responsible post is 
sufficient evidence of his steadiness, sense, courage and 
discretion. It is a further testimonial to the same ef- 
fect, that Gen. Colfax latterly became one of the most 
intimate personal friends of the great revolutionary 
chieftain. Gen. Colfax's wife was Hester Schuyler, a 
cousin of Gen. Philip Schuyler. 

General Colfax's son, Schuyler Colfax, the father of 
the Speaker, was an officer of one of the New York 
city banks, and died four months before his son was 
born. 

347 22 



348 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

Schuyler Colfax was born in New York city, March 
23, 1823, and was the only son of his widowed moth- 
er. He was taught in the common schools of the city 
— finished his education at the high school then stand- 
ing in Crosby St., and at ten years had received all the 
school training he ever had. He now became a clerk 
in a store, and after three j^ears removed to Indiana 
with his mother and her second husband, a Mr. Mat- 
thews. They settled in St. Joseph County. Here the 
youth for four years again served as clerk in the vil- 
lage of New Carlisle. When 17 years old he was ap- 
pointed deputy county auditor, and for the better ful- 
filment of his official duties, he now removed to the 
county town, South Bend, where he has lived ever 
since. 

Like almost every western citizen of any activity 
of body and mind, young Colfax took practical hold 
of political matters about as soon as he could vote. 
He talked and thought, and began to print his views 
from time to time in the local newspaper of the place. 
His peculiar faculty of dealing fairly and at the same 
time pleasantly, with men of all sorts, his natural so- 
briety and sensibleness of opinion, and his power of 
stating things plainly and correctly, made him what 
may be called a natural newspaper man. He was em- 
ployed during several sessions to report the proceed- 
ings of the State Senate for the Indianapolis Journal, 
and in this position made many friends, and gained a 
good reputation for political information and ability as 
a writer. 

In 1845, he became proprietor and editor of the 
" St. Joseph Valley Register," the local paper of his 



BECOMES AN EDITOR. 349 

town, South Bend. This was the beginning of his 
independent career, and if hope had been absent, the 
prospect would have looked meagre enough. He was 
a youth of just over twenty-one, and he had two hun- 
dred and fifty subscribers. But the youthful editor 
had hope, and what was far more important, remarka- 
ble tact and capacity for his laborious profession. By 
good fortune and perseverance, he was able to tide 
over the first dangerous crisis for a poor man who un- 
dertakes a large literary enterprise — the period of 
maximum debt, so fatal to new periodicals. This is a 
point like the darkest hour just before day, when the 
newspaper or magazine is very likely steadily gaining 
in reputation and even in circulation, but when the 
circulation has not quite reached the paying point, 
and the paper bills have been postponed to the latest 
possible moment, while the constant outgoes for pay- 
ing the journeymen, and for the other weekly office 
expenses, have kept up their monotonous drain. With 
Mr. Colfax this period was at the end of the first year 
of his paper, when he owed $1,375. The concern 
gradually became productive, however. A few years 
afterwards the office was burned down, and the unin- 
sured editor was left to begin his business over again. 
He did so, and has earned a very comfortable living 
by it, though he is by no means a rich man. 

Besides paying well, the "Register," as conducted 
by Mr. Colfax, is entitled to the much higher praise 
of having been a useful, interesting and a morally pure 
paper, always on the side of what is good and right 
in morals and in society. It has been, for instance, 
constantly in favor of temperance reform ; and it has 



I 

': all i\ 

J.<. 1840 
fa 1849 

■ 

.ally, 

■ . liUl<: 

':.' I:.'. 

.:. U,at. !'<'- ';'>'il<J not if 
j:-. J ;u-'J I / 200 //• 

z r>ppo i -J to bin Hi poll 
n. y/a... u<at i>/ Omluun N Pitch who 

[j Bright 

u o H 

..' fiat lli«: fatal 200 \nui 

.':;;>} v'/i.'- -., j//-;/'//'.' -J I-/ i '.' i ■ ' rtflin 

railroad thi i '" tboaa parti, and from 



GOES INTO 188. 351 

among the lab a mployed upon it. In B " . 

was a delegate to the Whig National Convention that 

nominated Gen. Scott, u I 

1848, was a so. He dee/. 

gressioiial nomination, and his district, which he had 

lost by or.Iy -200. i lost by 1.000. 

The Thirty-Third Congress, whose legal e\ s 
covered the period from Dee. 5. 1853, to Mar. 
1855, Franklin Pierce being Fv the Xe 

v.-. Bill Upon this, the "N Q at la- 

the wall, turned short about in -render, 

and set itself to put a limit to the spread 
The old established p. ..ol politieia. - 

days did not understand this crisis, and very mar. 
them did not know anything 

public opinion — or rather of public intention — that 
W%S going on, until to their immense surprise and 
gust, an ami slavery-e\:er.- aenev t'. 

knew not of. suddenly voted them out of the: 
Such a bat-eyed politician was Mr. Co", fax's I 
re>e:uative in Congress at this time. Even after hav- 
ing been elected as a Free Soil Denv 
undergoing a speeial season of argument and enr. 
by his friends and neighbors during a visit home while 
the Nebraska Bill was pending, the short-sighted 1, 
later went back and voted for it. lie very oni< 
reaped his reward, however. Had he known enough to 
take the opportunity of doing right, he would have 
found out that for once it wtjS the way to temporal suc- 
cess, for unquestionably he would have been re elected, 
and assuredly Mr. Colfax would have done his bee 
re-elect him. As it was, the energetic editor was at 



352 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

once selected by the anti-Nebraska men of that region 
to take the lead in punishing the delinquent. He 
was unanimously chosen candidate for Congress, and 
after the candid and jolly western fashion, the two 
nominees went round the district, yoked together for 
combat, like those duellists who are tied together by 
their left wrists and wield their knives with their right 
hands. The result was, Mr. Colfax's election by 2,000 
majority, the previous majority of his competitor hav- 
ing been 1,000 the other way. 

When the Thirty-Fourth Congress met, Dec. 3d, 

1855, there was a majority opposed to the administra- 
tion, but this opposition was of materials inharmonious 
among themselves. The anti-Nebraska members, 
properly so called, numbered about 108, the adminis- 
tration men, or Democrats, about 75, the third party, 
or "Know Nothing" men about 40; and there were 
a few who could not be classified. Now, the anti-Ne- 
braska men alone had twenty less than the necessary 
majority (128) out of the 234 members of the House; 
and if the Know Nothings and Democrats should effect 
a complete union, they could choose a Speaker. 
Whether they would do so was the principal question 
of the famous contest for the Speakership which now 
ensued, which lasted from Dec. 3, 1855, to Feb. 2, 

1856, two full months, and which resulted in the elec- 
tion of Mr. Banks — the first formal national triumph 
of the national anti-slavery sentiment. Its importance 
might be overlooked, but it was great, and lay in this : 
that the Speaker has power to constitute the commit- 
tees of the House — who prepare and in very great 
measure decide, all its business — just as he pleases. 



THE FAMOUS CONTEST FOR SPEAKERSHIP. 353 

Accordingly, if he were a pro-slavery man, past expe- 
rience gave full guarantee that those committees would 
be so formed as to effectually silence the voice of the 
anti-slavery sentiment of the House, and to bejuggle 
the whole of its legislation into an apparent and de- 
ceitful endorsement of the administration. To resist 
this dangerous and humiliating result, required, under 
the circumstances, a good deal of courage, both moral 
and physical, and powers of endurance almost equal 
to the extremities of a siege ; but the resolute pha- 
lanx of the anti-slavery men, cheered daily by their 
consciences within, and the earnest and increasing ap- 
plause of every friend of man without, fought the 
battle bravely through. 

During the contest, Mr. Colfax, who was a steady 
and unflinching soldier on the right side, served his 
cause at one very critical moment. It was the end of 
the first month of the struggle. There had been sixty 
or seventy ballots, and for the last thirty or forty of 
them the votes had been just about the same ; for 
Banks, anti-Nebraska, 103 to 106 ; Richardson, Dem- 
ocratic, 74 or 75 ; Fuller, Know Nothing, 37 to 41 ; 
and Pennington, a second anti-Nebraska candidate, 5 
to 8. Various experiments had been tried to relieve 
the dead-lock. It had been suggested that the lowest 
candidate should be dropped at each vote, until one 
of the last two must be chosen ; that after three bal- 
lots, the candidate having most votes should be elect- 
ed ; and other plans were submitted, but all to no ef- 
fect. About the end of December, Mr. Campbell, of 
Ohio, elected as an anti-Nebraska man, but of a suffi- 
ciently singular sort, either very unwise or very un- 



0^4 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

sound, offered a resolution that Mr. Orr of Soutn 
Carolina, "be invited to preside temporarily until a 
Speaker be elected." This extremely sly contrivance 
came within a hair-breadth of succeeding ; for it look- 
ed like a mere amicable expedient to facilitate busi- 
ness, while it was in fact almost certain that once in, 
the subtle and energetic Orr, aided by the whole 
South, the Democrats, most of the Know Nothings, 
and perhaps some weak brethren of the anti-slavery 
opposition, would stay in. A motion to lay Camp- 
bell's resolution on the table failed by a majority of 
twenty ; it looked as if Orr would be really Speaker 
in five minutes. Mr. Colfax now rose in the very 
nick of time, and made a motion which irresistibly 
reminds us of the device with which Hushai confound- 
ed the wisdom of Ahithophel. It was an amendment 
proposing to put the three contending parties on a 
fair equality during the contest, by allowing each to 
elect a temporary chairman, and these three to preside 
alternately in the order they might themselves agree 
upon. On this motion debate arose ; there was a re- 
cess before any vote was reached ; and the dangerous 
plan for making Orr Speaker was staved off. By next 
morning, Campbell's friends succeeded in inducing 
him to withdraw his resolution, and the contest settled 
back to its monotonous course of roll-calls and ad- 
journments, until the final adoption of a plurality 
rule by the administration men, who, when they did 
it, thought it would help them, and the consequent 
election of Banks, at the 134th ballot, February 2d, 
1856, by 103 to 100 for Aiken. The Know Nothings 



BALL AND CHAIN FOR FREE SPEECH. 355 

nearly all went to the Democratic side when the real 
pinch came. 

It was during this session — -June 21, 1856, — that Mr. 
Colfax delivered his well known and powerful speech 
on the bogus "Laws" of Kansas, imposed on that 
State by the fraud and violence of the pro-slavery ruf- 
fians of those days. This speech, a word-for-word quo- 
tation of clause after clause of this infamous code, ac- 
companied with a plain, sober and calmly toned expla- 
nation of the same, produced a very great effect, and 
was considered so able a summary of the case involved, 
that during the Presidential campaign of that year, a 
half million of copies of it were distributed among 
the voters of the United States. By way of driving 
quite home the truths of the case, Mr. Colfax, where 
he quoted the clause which inflicted imprisonment at 
hard labor with ball and chain, upon any one who 
should ever say " that persons have not the right to 
hold slaves in this Territory," lifted from his desk and 
showed to the House an iron ball of the statutory di- 
mensions (viz., 6 inches diameter, weighing about 30 
lbs., apologizing for not also exhibiting the six-foot chain 
prescribed along with it. Alexander H. Stephens, af- 
terwards Yice President of the Rebels, who sat close 
by, asked to take this specimen of pro-slavery jewelry 
for freemen, and having tested its weight, would have 
returned it. But Mr. Colfax smilingly asked him to 
hold it for him until he was through speaking, and 
while the pro-slavery leader dandled the decoration 
proposed by his friends for men guilty of free speech, 
Mr. Colfax, in a few telling sentences, showed that 
Washington and Jefferson and Webster and Clay had 



356 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

said the words which would have harnessed them, a 
quaternion of convicts, into the chain-gang of the bor- 
der ruffians. 

The close of this weighty speech is here quoted, 
not merely for the noble tone of its assertion of lofty 
principles, but also for the sake of showing the oppor- 
tune manner in which, by citing one of the departed 
great men of our land, he at once added to his argu- 
ment the strength of a mighty name, did justice to a 
man much spoken against but of many noble traits, 
and also illustrated a striking peculiarity of Mr. Colfax 
himself — the warmth, strength and unending persis- 
tency of his friendship. He closed as follows : 

"As I look, sir, to the smiling valleys and fertile 
plains of Kansas, and witness there the sorrowful 
scenes of civil war, in which, when forbearance at last 
ceased to be a virtue, the Free State men of the Terri- 
tory felt it necessary, deserted as they were by their 
Government, to defend their lives, their families, their 
property, and their hearthstones, the language of one 
of the noblest statesmen of the age, uttered six years 
ago at the other end of this Capitol, rises before my 
mind. I allude to the great statesman of Kentucky, 
Henry Clay. And while the party which, while he 
lived, lit the torch of slander at every avenue of his 
private life, and libelled him before the American peo- 
ple by every epithet that renders man infamous, as a 
gambler, debauchee, traitor, and enemy of his country, 
are now engaged in shedding fictitious tears over his 
grave, and appealing to his old supporters to aid by 
their votes in shielding them from the indignation of 
an uprisen people, I ask them to read this language 



HENRY CLAY AGAINST SLAVERY. 357 

of his, which comes to us as from his tomb to-day. With 
the change of but a single geographical word in the 
place of "Mexico," how prophetically does it apply to 
the very scenes and issues of this year ! And who can 
doubt with what party he would stand in the coming 
campaign, if he were restored to us from the damps 
of the grave, when they read the following, which fell 
from his lips in 1850, and with which, thanking the 
House for its attention, I conclude my remarks. 

"But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in 
civil war, between the two parties of this Confeder- 
acy, in which the effort upon the one side should be 
to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new 
Territories, and upon the other side to force its intro- 
duction there, what a spectacle should we present to 
the astonishment of mankind, in an effort not to prop- 
agate rights, but — I must say it, though I trust it will 
be understood to be said with no design to excite feel- 
ing — a war to propagate wrongs in the Territories thus 
acquired from Mexico ! It would be a war in which 
we should have no sympathies, no good wishes — in 
which all mankind would be against us ; for, from the 
commencement of the Revolution down to the present 
time, we have constantly reproached our British an- 
cestors for the introduction of slavery into this coun- 

try.' " 

Mr. Colfax's constituents, extremely satisfied with his 
course and abilities, renominated him by acclamation 
while he was in Washington this year, and he was 
re-elected after the usual joint canvass, although the 
presidential election of that fall went against his party. 
That such would be the result, Mr. Colfax had confi- 



358 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

dently predicted, as a consequence of the third-party 
nomination of Mr. Fillmore. But he worked with none 
the less zeal for his principles and his party. He had 
breadth and soundness and clearness of view enough to 
sight along the rising plane of the successive anti-sla- 
very votes of 1844, 1848, 1852, and 1856, and to see 
that the Party of Freedom and Right was the Party 
of the Future ; and while doubtless he would have 
been just as steadfast in doing right if he had no hope 
of a right-doing government, yet the very best of men 
works with a more cheery strength when, to use the 
words of the story, he can "see the chips fly." It 
was with sentiments of lofty resolution that he wrote, 
some months before the Republican nomination was 
made, and just after that of Mr. Fillmore; " Whether 
the Republican ticket shall be successful or defeated 
this year, the duty to support it, to proclaim and de- 
fend its principles, to arm the conscience of the nation, 
is none the less incumbent. The Republican move- 
ment is based on Justice and Right, consecrated to 
Freedom, commended by the teachings of our Revo- 
lutionary Fathers, and demanded by the extraordinary 
events of our recent history, and though its triumphs 
may be delayed, nothing is more certain." 

In 1858 Mr. Colfax was again nominated by accla- 
mation, and re-elected by a triumphant majority, and 
so he has been in every election since, carrying his dis- 
trict against untiring and desperate and enormous ef- 
forts directed against him specially as a representative 
man, not merely by his local opponents, but by the 
whole forces of every kind which the party op- 
posed to his could concentrate within his district. 



MR. COLFAX EARLY FOR LINCOLN. 359 

Such a series of political successes shows not only the 
power of the public speaker, and the discretion of the 
politician, but shows also a hearty and vigorous unity 
of noble thoughts between the constituency and the 
representative, and also a magnetic personal attractive- 
ness which holds fast forever any friend once made. 
Mr. Colfax hath friends, because he hath showed him- 
self friendly. 

During the 36th Congress, (December, 1859, to 
March, 1861,) Mr. Colfax was chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Post Offices and Post Roads, and did much 
and useful work in keeping alive and healthy the some- 
what unwieldy machinery of that important institution. . 
He was in particular, successful in promoting the ex- 
tension of mail facilities among the new mining com- 
munities in the Rocky Mountain gold fields, and in 
procuring the passage of the very important bills for 
the Daily Overland Mail, and for the Overland Telegraph 
to San Francisco, by way of Pike's Peak and Utah. 

It was a matter of course that Mr. Colfax should go 
with all his heart into the great struggle of 1860. He 
felt and understood with unusual earnestness and clear- 
ness the importance of the principles involved, and the 
hazards of the political campaign. Into a paragraph or 
two written some time before the Chicago nomination, 
he condensed a whole code of political wisdom, and 
can now be seen to have pointed out Abraham Lin- 
coln as the best candidate, by describing the political 
availability and ethical soundness of the position Mr. 
Lincoln then occupied. He wrote : 

" We differ somewhat from those ardent cotempora- 
ries who demand the nomination of their favorite rep- 



360 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

resentative man, whether popular or unpopular, and 
who insist that this must be done, even if we are de- 
feated. We do agree with them in declaring that we 
shall go for no man who does not prefer free labor and 
its extension, to slave labor and its extension, — who 
though mindful of the impartiality which should char- 
acterize the Executive of the whole Union, will not fail 
to rebuke all new plots for making the government the 
propagandist of slavery, and compel promptly and ef- 
ficiently the suppression of that horrible slave-trade 
which the whole civilized world has banned as infa- 
mous, piratical and accursed. But in a Republican 
National Convention, if any man could be found, North, 
South, East or West, whose integrity, whose life, and 
whose avowals rendered him unquestionably safe on 
these questions, and yet who could yet poll one, two 
or three hundred thousand votes more than any one 
else, we believe it would be both wisdom and duty, 
patriotism and policy, to nominate him by acclamation 
and thus render the contest an assured success from 
its very opening. We hope to see 1866 realize the 
famed motto of Augustine— "In essentials unity, in 
non-essentials liberty, in all things charity." 

That' is very broad and sound sense. It was in ex- 
act accordance with this doctrine and with these inti- 
mations as to who was the right man, that Mr. Lin- 
coln was nominated, according to the desire of Mr. 
Colfax's heart ; and in the coming campaign in his own 
very important state of Indiana, he did most valuable 
service in assuring the victory. 

Upon Mr. Lincoln's election, a very powerful influ- 
ence, made up of public sentiment, the efforts of 



THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR SPEAKER. 361 

newspapers, the urgent recommendations of gover- 
nors and legislatures, and in particular of the Repub- 
lican presidential electors, members of legislature, 
congressmen, and whole body of voters of Indiana, 
united to press upon the new President the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Colfax to the office of Post Master Gen- 
eral. Mr. Lincoln however had resolved to make Hon. 
C. B. Smith, of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior, 
and could give no other Cabinet place to that State. 
But as long as he lived, he loved and respected and 
trusted Mr. Colfax ; and it is on record that " he rarely 
took any steps affecting the interests of the nation 
without making his intentions known to Mr. Colfax, in 
whose judgment he placed the utmost confidence." 

Continuing in Congress, Mr. Colfax served with 
efficient and patriotic fervor in his place, and in De- 
cember, 1863, was chosen, and has since remained 
speaker. In this extremely responsible, important and 
laborious place, his official career has been openly vis- 
ible to all men, while only those among whom he pre- 
sides can competently appreciate the rare personal 
and acquired qualifications which he has so ably exer- 
cised — the even good temper, the exhaustless patience, 
the calm prompt presence of mind, the immense range 
of honest questions and sly quirks of parliamentary 
law which he must have at his tongue's end ; even 
the vigorous health and enduring physical frame which 
enable him to sit through session after session, day af- 
ter day, without losing his readiness or decisiveness of 
thought and action. 

He has, however, maintained and even increased his 
reputation as a wise and just legislator, a most useful 



362 SCHUYLER COLFAX. 

public servant, a shrewd and kindly chairman, and 
a skillful parliamentarian. His duties have not been 
in their nature so brilliant as the deeds of our great 
commanders by land or by sea ; nor so prominent even 
as the labors of some civilian officials ; but they have 
been such as to require the greatest and most solid 
and useful of the civic virtues, courage, integrity, 
forethought, justice, and steady inexhaustible industry. 




: Ritchie 



VSxcUaaa^v. 'VAa , vXJXaaXVu. 






CHAPTER XL 

EDWIN M. STANTON. 

Rebel Advantages at Opening of War— They knew all about the Army Officers 
— Early Contrast of Rebel Enthusiasm and Union Indifference — Importance 
of Mr. Stanton's Post— His Birth and Ancestry — His Education and Law 

■ Studies— County Attorney— State Reporter— Defends Mr. McNulty — Removes 
to Pittsburg — His Line of Business— The Wheeling Case— He Removes to 
Washington— His Qualifications as a Lawyer— He Enters Buchanan's Cabinet 
— His Unexpected Patriotism — His Own Account of the Cabinet at News of 
Anderson's Move to Sumter— The Lion before the Old Red Dragon — Appoint- 
ed Secretary of War—" Bricks in his Pockets " — Stanton's Habitual Reserve— 
His Wrath — " The Angel Gabriel as Paymaster " —Anecdotes of Lincoln's 
Confidence in Stanton — Lincoln's Affection for him— The Burdens of his Office 
— His Kindness of Heart within a Rough Outside— The Country his Debtor. 

Mr. Greeley, in his History of the American Con- 
flict, gives a survey of the advantages possessed by 
the rebels at the commencement of the war, in the 
martial character of their leaders. Jefferson Davis 
was a regularly educated graduate of West Point, who 
had been five years at the head of the War Department 
of the United States, and while in that situation had 
matured his future plans. He and his successor, Floyd, 
up to the year 1861, had arranged the United States 
military service to suit themselves, and left it in pre- 
cisely the best condition for their designs. "They 
knew every officer in the United States service, knew 
the military value of each, whom to call away and or- 
ganize to lead their own forces, and who, even if loy- 
al, would serve their purposes better being left in our 

armies than taken into theirs." 
363 23 



364 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

"On the other hand, President Lincoln, without 
military education or experience, found himself sud- 
denly plunged into a gigantic and to him unexpected 
war, with no single member of his cabinet even pre- 
tending to military genius or experience, and with the 
offices of his army filled to his hand by the chiefs of 
the rebellion. Whereas the whole rebel officers were 
enthusiasts who had forsaken all old connections to 
join the new army, the officers remaining were some 
of them old and feeble, like Scott, and others of that 
moderate kind of nature which inclines to remain sta- 
tionary with the old institutions, rather than to make 
a fiery forward movement. Some two hundred of the 
very bravest and most skilful of our army officers went 
over to the new cause, to which they carried all the 
enthusiasm of youth and hope. Lincoln, in fact, was 
in the condition of a man who should be put to a na- 
val race in an old ship from which his competitors had 
taken their pick of all the best sails, spars and hands. 

" It is notorious that during the first year or two 
of the war, while with every Confederate officer the 
rebellion was an enthusiasm and a religion, for which 
he was willing at any moment to die, there were on 
the Union side many officers, and those of quite high 
rank, who seemed to take matters with extreme cool- 
ness, and to have no very particular enthusiasm for 
fighting at all. These officers seemed to consider se- 
cession as a great and unlucky mistake — a mistake, 
too, for which they seemed to think the intemperate 
zeal of the Black Republicans was particularly in fault, 
and their great object seemed to be to conduct the 
war with as little fighting as possible, using most con- 



HIS BIRTH AND ANCESTRY. 365 

ciliatory language, and always being sure to return 
fugitive slaves whenever they could get a good oppor- 
tunity, thus apparently expecting in some favorable 
hour to terminate hostilities with another of those 
grand compromises which had been tried with such 
signal success in years past." 

The advancement of Stanton to the post of Secre- 
tary of War, was a movement made after it became 
somewhat more a settled point than at first appeared, 
that war should mean war. 

His position during the whole war was, next to that 
of the President, the most important, responsible and 
influential civil post in the United States, and his ser- 
vices as an organizer, an administrative and executive 
oflicer, and as a fearless, energetic, resolute, powerful, 
and patriotic citizen, were perhaps as nearly indispen- 
sable to the success of the nation in the war as those 
of any other one man. Yet the recorded materials 
for preparing an account of him are excessively scan- 
ty ; far more so than for any of his companions in the 
chief offices of Mr. Lincoln's cabinet. This fact is in 
a certain sense a very creditable one to him ; since it 
is the result of his life-long practice not to talk about 
himself, and not to talk about his work, but only to 
do it. 

Edwin M. Stanton was born at Steubenville, in Ohio, 
in the year 1815. His ancestors were of the Quaker 
persuasion, as were those of Mr. Lincoln and Attorney 
General Bates. His parents removed to Ohio from 
Culpepper county, in the mountain region of Virginia. 
Stanton received the usual school training of a country 
boy, became a student of Kenyon College, in 1833, but 



366 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

only remained a year and left. This was the end of 
his scholastic education. It is easy, to those who 
know the decisive, impetuous, self-reliant nature of 
the man, and who remember the rough, plain, inde- 
pendent atmosphere of the backwoods country where 
he grew up, to imagine how easily any supposed in- 
dignity from his instructors would drive him out of 
their precincts, or how readily he would give up the 
idea of further studies as unnecessary, if his supply 
of money failed. However this was, he took up an 
employment which allowed him to continue some kind 
of mental training, for he became a bookseller's clerk 
at Columbus. He also studied law, and in 1836 was 
admitted to the bar. He first opened an office at Ca- 
diz, Harrison county, Ohio, and his robust force and 
direct sense quickly gave him the best of whatever 
practice the country afforded. He became the county 
prosecuting attorney in about a year ; in another he 
had removed to the larger business center of his na- 
tive place, Steubenville. His practice rapidly increas- 
ed, and during three years from 1839 he was Reporter 
of the Ohio Supreme Court decisions. During his 
career at Steubenville, he was the counsel of Caleb J. 
McNulty, clerk of the House of Representatives, on 
his trial for embezzling public money, and cleared 
him. This case made a good deal of noise in its day. 
1 In 1848, his business still increasing, Mr. Stanton re- 
moved again, this time to Pittsburg, where he remained 
until 1857, becoming without question the first lawyer 
at that bar, and beginning to be employed in many of 
that important and vigorously contested class of cases 
which are carried up to the United States Supreme 



HE REMOVES TO WASHINGTON. 367 

Court at Washington. One of these, the Wheeling 
Bridge case, is perhaps that in which Mr. Stanton 
gained his greatest reputation as a lawyer. It is a 
curious illustration of his carelessness about his repu- 
tation, that not long ago, when an intimate personal 
friend of Mr. Stanton wanted a copy of his argument 
in this case to use in a biographical sketch, the Secre- 
tary was unable to furnish it. 

In 1857 he removed once more, to Washington, 
still following his business. This now began to con- 
sist largely of heavy patent cases, a peculiar and diffi- 
cult but very gainful department of legal practice. It 
is observable that the class of cases in which Mr. 
Stanton has been prominent, are those in which the 
executive mental faculties have most to do with the 
subject-matter — patent cases, land cases, vigorous con- 
troversies between great corporations about travelled 
routes or conflicting rights. Such cases arise among 
executive men, and Mr. Stanton's immense endowment 
of executive energy qualified him to succeed easily in 
dealing with them. 

Mr. Stanton was naturally a Democrat ; the vigor- 
ous traits of his character harmonizing spontaneously 
with the rough, aggressive energy of the Jacksonians. 
Probably his politics may have had some influence in 
causing Attorney-General Black to employ him, in 
1858, to go to California and argue for the United States 
some very important land claim cases there. At any 
rate, if he had not been a Democrat, and a thorough- 
going one, he would not have been selected by Mr. 
Buchanan in December, 1860, to succeed Mr. Black as 



$68 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

Attorney- General, when on Mr. Cass 1 resignation Mr. 
Black became Secretary of State. 

The gang of treasonable schemers who were in those 
days using their high positions to bind the country 
hand and foot, as securely as they could, in prepara- 
tion for secession, undoubtedly had reckoned that in 
the new Attorney- General, if they did not find an 
ally, they would not encounter an obstacle. But his 
patriotism was of a very different kind from that of 
too many of his party. When the question before 
him, instead of being one of high or low tariff, or of one 
or another sort of currency, became a question wheth- 
er he should go with his party in permitting his coun- 
try to be ruined, or should join with all true patriots 
irrespective of party considerations, to preserve his 
country, he did not hesitate at all. He neither made 
allowances for the disreputable fright of old Mr. Bu- 
chanan, nor the far more disreputable schemes of the 
traitors who were bullying the feeble and helpless Old 
Public Functionary ; but stood firmly amongst them 
all, a fearless and determined defender of the rights 
of the national government. 

Mr. Stanton once gave a curious and striking sketch 
of the manners of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet in those 
days. While speaking of the results of Anderson's 
move to Sumter, he remarked : 

"This little incident was the crisis of our history — 
the pivot upon which everything turned. Had he 
remained in Fort Moultrie, a very different combina- 
tion of circumstances would have arisen. The attack 
on Sumter, commenced by the South, united the 
North, and made the success of the Confederacy im- 



STANTON IN BUCHANAN'S CABINET. 369 

possible. I shall never forget our coming together by 
special summons that night. Buchanan sat in his arm 
chair in a corner of the room, white as a sheet, with 
the stump of a cigar in his mouth. The dispatches 
were laid before us ; and so much violence ensued 
that he had to turn us all out of doors." 

What sort of a scene, and what sort of language 
and goings on are covered under that phrase of Mr. 
Stanton's, those who are familiar with the manners of 
the old Red Dragon of slavery, under moments of ex- 
citement, may imagine. Oaths and curses, threats of 
cutting out hearts and tearing out bowels, were usual 
amenities, forms of argumentation and statement quite 
familiar, on such occasions. Mr. Stanton, as any one 
may see by a glance at his head, is one of those men 
built on the lion pattern, a man who never knew what 
fear was — a man, also, awful and tremendous in pow- 
ers of wrath and combativeness, and we may be sure 
at this moment the lion stood at bay, and that his roar 
in answer to the dragon's hiss, was something to shake 
the cabinet and frighten poor Mr. Buchanan quite out 
of his proprieties. We may be sure the traitors did 
not go without a full piece of Stanton's mind, stormed 
after them with shot and shell, worthy a future Secre- 
tary of the War Department. 

Mr. Stanton's appointment as Secretary of War was 
January 20, 1862 ; his predecessor, Mr. Cameron, hav- 
ing resigned a week before. This appointment was 
probably in a great measure due to the fresh recollec- 
tion of the fearless vigor with which Mr. Stanton, along 
with Messrs. Dix and Holt, had asserted the rights of 
the nation under Buchanan. Mr. Lincoln, in making 



370 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

his selection, had the double good fortune of appoint- 
ing a man of first-class merit for the position, and one 
whose "section" was in the right part of the country.' 
It is on record that "in answering some questions on 
the subject, he observed that his first wish had been 
to choose a man from a border state, but that he knew 
New England would object ; that on the other hand 
he would have also been glad to choose a New Eng- 
lander, but he knew the Border States would object. 
So on the whole he concluded to select from some inter- 
vening territory, 'and to tell you the truth, gentlemen,' 
he added, ' I don't believe Stanton knows where he be- 
longs himself!' Some of the company now said some- 
thing about Mr. Stanton's impulsiveness, to which Mr. 
Lincoln replied with one of those queer stories with 
which he used to answer friends and enemies alike ; 
' Well,' said he, ' we may have to treat him as they are 
sometimes obliged to treat a Methodist minister I know 
of out West. He gets wrought up so high in his prayers 
and exhortations that they are obliged to put bricks in 
his pockets to keep him down. We may be obliged 
to serve Stanton the same way, but I guess we'll let 
him jump a while first !' " 

The existence of the country was bound up in the 
war, and it was a matter of course that the War De- 
partment should attract the greatest part of Mr. Lin- 
coln's solicitude and attention, and that he should be 
more frequently and confidentially in intercourse with 
its Secretary, than with the other Departments of the 
Government. Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton had never 
met, it is said, until when the Secretary received his 
commission from the President ; nor had Mr. Stanton 



HIS HABITUAL RESERVE. 371 

any knowledge of the intention to appoint him until 
the day before the nomination. 

Mr. Stanton's Secretaryship is a noble record of 
vast energy, untiring labor, thorough patriotism, and 
fervent and unfailing courage. Mr. Lincoln, a shrewd 
and wise judge of men, knew him familiarly, and 
loved and valued him more and more the longer and 
closer was their intercourse. Indeed, Mr. Stanton is 
probably a man closely shut up and inexpressive of 
his good and loveable traits and sentiments, beyond 
almost any one living ; and it must have required the 
whole tremendous pressure and heat of the war, to 
soften his iron crust sufficiently to let even the keen 
eyed President find out how human and noble a heart 
was silently beating inside. The most interesting of 
the scanty anecdotes which are in existence about the 
Secretary are such as show the unlimited trust which 
Mr. Lincoln came to bestow upon him, or the rough 
and vigorous utterances by which he customarily re- 
vealed when he revealed at all, anything in the nature 
of feelings on his official duties or in reference to the 
war. Like many other men of real goodness hidden 
beneath a rugged outside, Mr. Stanton's most uttera- 
ble sentiment was wrath, and he often, as it were, shot 
out a sentiment of goodness inside of a bullet of anger, 
as a gruff benefactor might fling a gift at his intended 
beneficiary. Such was the "jumping " which Mr. Lin- 
coln proposed to allow, before keeping down his ener- 
getic Secretary with bricks in his pockets. Such was 
the strong figure in which one day he conveyed to a 
brother Secretary his views on the fitness of appointees. 
Mr. Usher, when Secretary of the Interior, once asked 



372 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

Mr. Stanton to appoint a " young friend," paymaster in 
the army. " How old is he? " asked Stanton, in his 
curt manner. " About twenty-one, I believe," said 
Mr. Usher; "he is of good family and of excellent 
character." "Usher," exclaimed Mr. Stanton, in per- 
emptory reply, " I would not appoint the Angel Ga- 
briel a paymaster if he was only twenty-one ! " 

There was just as much unceremoniousness, and 
even very much more peremptory force and earnestness 
in the vigorous rebuke which Mr. Stanton adminis- 
tered to Mr. Lincoln on the night of March 30, 1865, 
for the unseasonable favors which he was inclined to 
offer to the rebels, to the detriment of justice and of 
the paramount rights of the nation. On this occasion, 
while the last bills of the session were under examina- 
tion for signing, and while the President and all with 
him were enjoying the expectation of to-morrow's in- 
auguration, a dispatch came in from Grant, which 
stated his confidence that a few days must now end 
the business with Lee and Richmond, and spoke of an 
application made by Lee for an interview to negotiate 
about peace. Mr. Lincoln intimated pretty clearly an 
intention to permit extremely favorable terms, and to 
let his General-in-Chief negotiate them ; even to an 
extent that overpowered the reticent habits of his 
Secretary of War, who, after holding his tongue as 
long as he could, broke out sternly : 

" Mr. President, to-morrow is inauguration day. If 
you are not to be the President of an obedient and 
united people, you had tetter not be inaugurated. Your 
work is already done, if any other authority than 
yours is for one moment to be recognized, or any terms 



HIS REPROOF OF MR. LINCOLN. 373 

made that do not signify that you are the supreme 
head of the nation. If generals in the field are to ne- 
gotiate peace, or any other chief magistrate is to be 
acknowledged on this continent, then you are not need- 
ed and you had better not take the oath of office.' 1 '' 

" Stanton, you are right," said the President, his 
whole tone changing. " Let me have a pen." 

Mr. Lincoln sat down at the table, and wrote as 
follows : 

"The President directs me to say to you that he 
wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, 
unless it be for the capitulation of Lee's army, or on 
some minor or purely military matter. He instructs 
me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or con- 
fer upon any political question ; such questions the Pres- 
ident holds in his own hands, and will submit them to no 
military conference or conventions. In the mean time 
you are to press to the utmost your military advantages." 
The President then read over what he had written, 
and then said : 

"Now Stanton, date and sign this paper, and send 
it to Grant. We'll see about this peace business. " 

An account which appeared in a Cincinnati paper 
during the war, of a curious transaction at Washing- 
ton, shows that Mr. Lincoln was as steady in trusting 
to Mr. Stanton's own wisdom in action, as he was 
ready to acknowledge the justice of the Secretary's 
reproofs on a question of constitutional propriety. 
This account is as follows : 

"While the President was on his way back from 
Richmond, and at a point where no telegraph could 
reach the steamer upon which he was, a dispatch of 



374 EDWIM M. STANTON. 

the utmost importance reached Washington, demand- 
ing the immediate decision of the President himself. 
The dispatch was received by a confidential staff officer, 
who at once ascertained that Mr. Lincoln could not be 
reached. Delay was out of the question, as impor- 
tant army movements were involved. The officer hav- 
ing the dispatch went with it directly to Mr. Stanton's 
office, but the Secretary could not be found. Messen- 
gers were hastily dispatched for him in all directions. 
Their search was useless, and a positive answer had been 
already too much delayed by the time it had occupied. 
With great reluctance the staff officer sent a reply in 
the President's name. Soon after, Mr. Stanton entered 
himself, having learned of the efforts made to find him. 
The dispatch was produced, and he was informed by 
the officer sending the answer, of what had been done. 

" ' Did I do right V said the officer to the Secretary. 

" ' Yes, Major, 1 replied Mr. Stanton, ' I think you 
have sent the correct reply, but I should hardly have 
dared to take the responsibility.' 

" At this the whole magnitude of the office and the 
great responsibility he had taken upon himself, seemed 
to fall upon the officer, and almost overcame him ; and 
he asked Mr. Stanton what he had better do, and was 
advised to go directly to the President, on his return, 
and state the case frankly to him. It was a sleepless 
night to the officer, and at the very earliest hour con- 
sistent with propriety he went to the White House." 

Here the officer, scarcely even by the accidental in- 
terposition of the President's son, was able to reach 
him, as there were strict orders for his privacy just 



Lincoln's affection for him. 375 

then. At last, he entered the President's room, and, 
the story continues, 

. " The dispatch was shown him, and the action upon 
it stated frankly and briefly. The President thought 
a moment and then said, l Did you consult the Secre- 
tary of War, Major ? ' The absence of the Secretary 
at the important moment was then related to Mr. Lin- 
coln, with the subsequent remark of Mr. Stanton, that 
he thought the right answer had been given, but that 
himself would have shrunk from the responsibility. 

" Mr. Lincoln, on hearing the story, rose, crossed the 
room, and taking the officer by the hand, thanked him 
cordially, and then spoke of Mr. Stanton as follows : 

" ' Hereafter, Major, when you have Mr. Stanton's 
sanction in any matter, you have mine, for so great is 
my confidence in his judgment and patriotism, that I 
never wish to take an important step myself without 
first consulting him.' " 

Only a few days before his death, Mr. Lincoln gave 
a still more striking testimony of the affectionate na- 
ture of his regard for Mr. Stanton. This was when 
Mr. Stanton tendered him his resignation of the War 
Department, on the ground that the work for whose 
sake he had taken it, was now done. 

11 Mr. Lincoln," says a witness, " was greatly moved 
by the Secretary's words, and tearing in pieces the 
paper containing the resignation, and throwing his 
arms about the Secretary, he said, * Stanton, you have 
been a good friend and a faithful public servant, and 
it is not for you to say when you will no longer be 
needed here.' Several friends of both parties were 



376 EDWIN M. STANTON. 

present on this occasion, and there was not a dry eye 
that witnessed the scene." 

Mr. Stanton occupied a situation of torturing re- 
sponsibility and distracting cares. He bore burdens ' 
of perplexity and doubt and apprehension such as 
might tax the stoutest nerves. His only mode of 
meeting and repelling the dashing waves of hourly so- 
licitations and the thousand agencies which beset a man 
in his position, was to make himself externally as rug- 
ged and stern as a rock. 

But those who knew him intimately, as did Lincoln, 
and as did many others who were drawn towards him, 
interiorly, during the wrench of the great struggle, 
knew that deep within there was a heart, warm, kind, 
true and humbly religious — deeply feeling his respon- 
sibilities to God, and seeking with honest purpose to 
fulfil his duties in the awful straits in which he was 
placed. To a lady for whom he had performed in the 
way of his office some kindness, and who expressed 
gratitude, he writes : 

u In respect to the matter in which you feel a per- 
sonal interest and refer to with kind expressions of 
gratitude towards myself, I am glad that in the discharge 
of simple duty I have been able to relieve an anxious 
care in the heart of any one, and much more in the 
hearts of persons, who although personally unknown 
to me, I have been accustomed from early youth to 
reverence. 
"In my official station I have tried to do my duty as 
I shall answer to God at the Great Day, but it is the 
misfortune of that station — a misfortune that no one 
else can comprehend the magnitude of, that most of 



THE COUNTRY HIS DEBTOR. 377 

my duties are harsh and painful to some one, so that I 
rejoice at an opportunity, however rare, of combining 
duty with kindly offices." 

It remains to be seen what further services, if any, 
Mr. Stanton will render to his country in a public ca- 
pacity. Should he again be a public servant, it will 
be as it has been, the United States, and not he, who 
will be the obliged party. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FREDERICKDOUGLASS. 

The Opportunity for Every Man in a Republic — The Depth Below a White 
Man's Poverty — The Starting Point whence Fred Douglass Raised Himself — 
His Mother — Her Noble Traits — Her Self-Denial for the sake of Seeing him — 
She Defends him against Aunt Katy — Her Death — Col. Loyd's Plantation — 
The Luxury of his own Mansion—The Organization of his Estate — " Old 
Master" — How they Punished the "Women — How Young Douglass Philoso- 
phized on Being a Slave— Plantation Life — The Allowance of Food — The 
Clothes — An Average Plantation Day — Mr. Douglass' Experience as a Slave 
Child— The Slave Children's Trough— The Slave Child's Thoughts— The 
Melancholy of Slave Songs — He Becomes a House Servant — A Kind Mistress 
Teaches him to Read — How he completed his Education — Effects of Learning 
to Read — Experiences Religion and Prays for Liberty. — Learns to Write — Hires 
his Time, and Absconds — Becomes a Free Working-Man in New Bedford — 
Marries — Mr. Douglass on Garrison — Mr. Douglass' Literary Career. 

The reader will perceive, in reading the memoirs 
which we have collected in the present volume, that 
although they give a few instances of men who have 
risen to distinction from comfortable worldly circum- 
stances, by making a good use of the provision afford- 
ed them by early competence and leisure, yet by far 
the greater number have raised themselves by their 
own unaided efforts, in spite of every disadvantage 
which circumstances could throw in their way. 

It is the pride and the boast of truly republican in- 
stitutions that they give to every human being an op- 
portunity of thus demonstrating what is in him. If a 
man is a man, no matter in what rank of society he is 
born, no matter how tied down and weighted by pov- 
erty and all its attendant disadvantages, there is noth- 
ing in our American institutions to prevent his rising 



i.. LV. is. Wws5£ 







(f)Lua^^i jQ- ^/aM- 



THE DEPTH BELOW WHITE MEN'S POVERTY. 381 

to the very highest offices in the gift of the country. 
So, though a man like Charles Surnner, coming of an 
old Boston family, with every advantage of Boston 
schools and of Cambridge college, becomes distin- 
guished through the country, yet side by side with 
him we see Abraham Lincoln, the rail splitter, Henry 
Wilson, from the shoemaker's bench, and Chase, from 
a New Hampshire farm. But there have been in our 
country some three or four million of human beings 
who were born to a depth of poverty below what 
Henry Wilson or Abraham Lincoln ever dreamed of. 
Wilson and Lincoln, to begin with, owned nothing 
but their bare hands, but there have been in this coun- 
try four or five million men and women who did not 
own even their bare hands. Wilson and Lincoln, and 
other brave men like them, owned their own souls 
and wills — they were free to say, "Thus and thus I 
will do— I will be educated, I will be intelligent, I 
will be Christian, I will by honest industry amass prop- 
erty to serve me in my upward aims." But there were 
four million men and women in America who were 
decreed by the laws of this country not to own even 
their own souls. The law said of them — They shall 
be taken and held as chattels personal to all intents 
and purposes. This hapless class of human beings 
might be sold for debt, might be mortgaged for real 
estate, nay, the unborn babe might be pledged or 
mortgaged for the debts of a master. There were 
among these unfortunate millions, in the eye of the 
law, neither husbands nor wives, nor fathers nor moth- 
ers ; they were only chattels personal. They could no 
more contract a legal marriage than a bedstead can 
24 



S$*2 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

marry a cooking-stove, or a plough be wedded to a 
spinning wheel. They were week after week adver- 
tised in public prints to be sold in company with 
horses, cows, pigs, hens, and other stock of a planta- 
tion. 

They were forbidden to learn to read. The slave 
laws imposed the same penalty on the man who should 
teach a slave to read as on the man who wilfully put 
out his eyes. They had no legal right to be Christians, 
or enter the kingdom of heaven, because the law re- 
garded them simply as personal property, subject to 
the caprice of an owner, and when the owner did not 
choose to have his property be a Christian, he could 
shut him out from the light of the gospel as easily as 
one can close a window shutter. 

Now if we think it a great thing that Wilson and 
Lincoln raised themselves from a state of comparative- 
ly early disadvantage to high places in the land, what 
shall we think of one who started from this immeas- 
ureable gulf below them ? 

Frederick Douglass had as far to climb to get to the 
spot where the poorest free white boy is born, as that 
white boy has to climb to be president of the nation, 
and take rank with kings and judges of the earth. 

There are few young men born to competence, car- 
ried carefully through all the earlier stages of train- 
ing, drilled in grammar school, and perfected by a 
four years' college course, who could stand up on a 
platform and compete successfully with Frederick 
Douglass as an orator. Nine out of ten of college edu- 
cated young men would shrink even from the trial, 
and yet Frederick Douglass fought his way up from a 



WHENCE FRED DOUGLASS RAISED HIMSELF. 383 

nameless hovel on a Maryland plantation, where with 
hundreds of others of the young live stock he shivered 
in his little' tow shirt, the only garment allowed him 
for summer and winter, kept himself warm by sitting 
on the sunny side of out buildings, like a little dog, 
and often was glad to dispute with the pigs for the 
scraps of what came to them to satisfy his hunger. 

From this position he has raised himself to the hab- 
its of mind, thought and life of a cultivated gentle- 
man, and from that point of sight has illustrated ex- 
actly what slavery was, (thank God we write in the 
past tense,) in an autobiography which most aflfecting- 
ly presents what it is to be born a slave. Every man 
who struck a stroke in our late great struggle — every 
man or woman who made a sacrifice for it — every one 
conscious of inward bleedings and cravings that never 
shall be healed or assuaged, for what they have ren- 
dered up in this great anguish, ought to read this au- 
tobiography of a slave man, and give thanks to God 
that even by the bitterest sufferings they have been 
permitted to do something to wipe such a disgrace 
and wrong from the earth. 

The first thing that every man remembers is his 
mother. Americans all have a mother at least that 
can be named. But it is exceedingly affecting to read 
the history of a human being who writes that during 
all his childhood he never saw his mother more than 
two or three times, and then only in the night. And 
why? Because she was employed on a plantation 
twelve miles away. Her only means of seeing her 
boy were to walk twelve miles over to the place where 
he was, spend a brief hour, and walk twelve miles 



384 



FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 



back, so as to be ready to go to work at four 
o'clock in the morning. How many mothers would 
often visit their children by such an effort ? and yet 
at well remembered intervals the mother of Frederick 
Douglass did this for the sake of holding her child a 
little while in her arms, lying down a brief hour with 
him. 

That she was a woman of uncommon energy and 
strength of affection this sufficiently shows, because as 
slave mother she could do him no earthly good — she 
owned not a cent to bring him. She could not buy 
him clothes. She could not even mend or wash the 
one garment allotted to him. 

Only once in his childhood did he remember his 
mother's presence as being to him anything of that 
comfort and protection that it is to ordinary children. 
He, with all the other little live stock of the planta- 
tion, were dependent for a daily allowance of food on 
a cross old woman whom they called Aunt Katy. For 
some reason of her own, Aunt Katy had taken a pique 
against little Fred, and announced to him that she was 
going to keep him a day without food. At the close 
of this day, when he crept shivering in among the 
other children, and was denied even the coarse slice 
of corn bread which all the rest had, he broke out 
into loud lamentations. Suddenly his mother appear- 
ed behind him — caught him in her arms, poured out 
volumes of wrathful indignation on Aunt Katy, and 
threatened to complain to the overseer if she did not 
give him his share of food — produced from her bosom 
a sweet cake which she had managed to procure for 
him, and sat down to wipe away his tears and see him 



MR. DOUGLASS' MOTHER. 385 

enjoy it. This mother must have been a woman of 
strong mental characteristics. Though a plantation 
field hand, she could read, and if we consider against 
what superhuman difficulties such a knowledge must 
have been acquired, it is an evidence of wonderful 
character. Douglass says of her that she was tall and 
finely proportioned. With affecting simplicity he 
says : " There is in Pritchard's Natural History of Man, 
p. 157, the head of a figure the features of which so 
resemble those of my mother, that I often recur to it 
with something of the feeling which I suppose others 
to experience when looking on the pictures of dear 
departed ones." 

The face alluded to is copied from a head of Rame- 
ses the great Egyptian king of the nineteenth dynasty. 
The profile is European in its features, and similar in 
class to the head of Napoleon. From all these con- 
siderations, we have supposed that the mother of 
Douglass must have been one of that Mandingo tribe 
of Africans who were distinguished among the slaves 
for fine features, great energy, intelligence and pride 
of character. The black population of America is 
not one race. If slaveholders and kidnappers had been 
busy for years in Europe stirring up wars in the differ- 
ent countries, and sending all the captives to be sold in 
America, the mixture of Swedes, Danes, Germans, 
Russians, Italians, French, might all have gone under 
the one head of Whitemen, but they would have been 
none the more of the same race. The negroes of this 
country are a mixture torn from tribes and races quite 
as dissimilar. The Mandingo has European features, 
a fine form, wavy, not woolly hair, is intelligent, vig- 



386 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

orous, proud and brave. The Guinea negro has 
a coarse, animal head, is stupid, dirty, cunning. Yet 
the argument on negro powers is generally based on 
some such sweeping classification as takes the Guinea 
negro for its type. 

The father of Frederick Douglass was a white man, 
who, he never knew — it would have been of no ad- 
vantage to him had he known— but there is reason to 
think that those fine intellectual gifts, that love of lib- 
erty, and hatred of slavery which have led him to the 
position he now occupies among freemen, were due to 
the blood of his mother. That silent, noble black 
woman, whose wrongs were borne in such patience, 
whose soul must so often have burned within her, whose 
affections were stronger than weariness, and whose 
mind would possess the key of knowledge even though 
she gained it at such terrible sacrifices and hazards, 
she is to be honored as the mother of Garrison is, as 
having lived in her son and being the true author and 
inspirer of all that is good and just in him. 

After a few short interviews the communication be- 
tween Douglass and his mother ceased. She was taken 
sick, had a long illness and died without a word or 
message, or any token passing between her and her 
child. He running wild, a dirty little animal on the 
distant plantation, she suffering, wasting, dying in si- 
lence — going into the great Invisible where so many 
helpless mothers have gone to plead for their children 
before God. 

The plantation of Col. Loyd, on which Fred Doug- 
lass was raised, was a representative fact illustrating 
what may be known of slavery. There might be 



WEALTH OF DOUGLASS OWNER. 387 

seen a large airy elegant house, filled with every lux- 
ury and comfort, the abode of hospitality and leisure. 
Company always coming and going — bountiful tables 
spread with every delicacy of sea and land — choice 
cookery, old wines, massive plate, splendid curtains 
and pictures, all combined to give the impression of a 
joyous and abundant life. Fifteen well dressed, well 
trained servants, chosen for good looks and good man- 
ners, formed an obsequious army of attendants behind 
the chairs of guests at the dinner hour, or waited on 
them in their private apartments. 

The shrubbery, the flower gardens, the ample lawns, 
were laid out with European taste, the stables had 
studs of the finest blood horses at the disposal 
of guests — all was cultivation, elegance and refine- 
ment. 

Col. Loyd was supposed to own a thousand slaves, 
and what the life was on which all this luxury and ele- 
gance was built, the history of Douglass and his mother 
may show. Col. Loyd owned several contiguous farms 
or plantations, each one under an overseer, and all 
were under the general supervision of an agent who 
lived on the central plantation and went by the name 
among the slaves of Old Master. Between this man 
and his family, and Col. Loyd and his family, there was 
none of the intercourse of equals. No visits were ever 
exchanged, and no intercourse except of a necessary 
business character ever took place. The owner and 
his family had nothing to do with the management of 
the estates any further than to enjoy and dispense the 
revenues they brought ; in all the rest was left to " Old 
Master and the Overseers." The estate was as secluded 



388 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

from all influence of public opinion, and the slaves 
were as completely in the power of the overseers, as 
the serfs in the feudal ages. Even the vessels which 
carried the produce of the plantation to Baltimore, 
were owned by Col. Loyd. Every man and boy by 
whom these vessels were worked, excepting the cap- 
tains, were Col. Loyd' s property. All the artizans on 
all the places, the blacksmiths, wheelwrights, shoe mak- 
ers, weavers and coopers, also were pieces of property 
belonging to Col. Loyd. What chance was there for 
laws or for public sentiment, or any other humanizing 
influence, to restrain absolute power in a district so 
governed ? 

One of the earliest lessons in the practical meaning 
of slavery was taught to the child by hearing the 
shrieks and groans of a favorite Aunt Esther, under 
the lash of Old Master. She was a finely formed, hand- 
some woman, and had the presumption to prefer a 
young slave man to her master, and for this she was 
made the victim of degradation and torture. 

On another occasion he saw a young girl who came 
from one of the neighboring plantations, with her head 
cut and bleeding from the brutality of the overseer, 
to put herself under the protection of Old Master. 
Though the brutality of her treatment was perfectly 
evident, he heard her met only with reproaches and 
oaths and ordered to go back at once or expect even 
severer treatment. This was a part of an unvarying 
system. It was a fixed rule, never to listen to com- 
plaints of any kind from a slave, and even when they 
were evidently well founded, to affect to disregard 
them. That the slave was to have no appeal in any 



THE SLAVES HOUSEKEEPING. 389 

case from the absolute power of the overseer, was a 
fundamental maxim of the system. 

Endowed by his mother with an intelligent and 
thoughtful organization, young Douglass began early 
to turn in his mind the dark question, " Why am I a 
slave f n On this subject he pushed enquiries among 
his little play -fellows and the elderly negroes, but could 
get no satisfactory solution, except that some remem- 
bered that their fathers and mothers were stolen from 
Africa. When not more than seven or eight years old 
these thoughts burned in him, whenever he wandered 
through the woods and fields, and a strong determina- 
tion to become a freeman in future life took posses- 
sion of him. It may have been inspired by the invis- 
ible guardianship of that poor mother, who, unable to 
help him in life, may have been permitted higher pow- 
ers in the world of spirits. 

The comments which Douglass makes on many feat- 
ures of slave life, as they affected his childish mind, 
are very peculiar, and show slavery entirely from an 
inside point of view. 

In regard to the physical comforts of plantation life, 
he gives the following account : 

" It is the boast of slaveholders that their slaves enjoy 
more of the physical comforts of life than the peasan- 
try of any country in the world. My experience con- 
tradicts this. The men and the women slaves on Col. 
Loyd's plantation received as their monthly allowance, 
eight pounds of pickled pork or their equivalent in 
fish. The pork was often tainted and the fish of the 
poorest quality. With this, they had one bushel of 
unbolted Indian meal, of which quite fifteen per cent. 



390 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

was fit only for pigs ; with this one pint of salt was 
given, and this was the entire monthly allowance of a 
full grown slave, working constantly in the open field, 
from morning till night, every day of the month, ex- 
cept Sundays. This was living on a fraction more 
than a quarter of a pound of poor meat per day, and 
less than a peck of corn meal per week, and there is 
no work requiring more abundant supply of food to 
prevent physical exhaustion, than the field work of a 
slave. 

"So much for food. Now as for raiment. The year- 
ly allowance of clothing for slaves on this plantation, 
consisted of two linen shirts, one pair of tow trowsers for 
summer, a pair of trowsers and jacket of slazy work- 
manship for winter, one pair of yarn stockings, and 
one pair of coarse shoes. The slave's entire apparel 
could not have cost more than eight dollars a year. 
Children not yet able to work in the field had neither 
shoes, stockings, jackets or trowsers given them. 
Their clothing consisted of two coarse tow linen shirts 
per year, and when these failed, they went literally 
naked till next allowance day. Flocks of children 
from five to ten years old might be seen on Col. Loyd's 
plantations as destitute of clothing as any little heathen 
in Africa and this even in the frosty month of March. 

"As to beds to sleep on, none were given — nothing 
but a coarse blanket, such as is used in the North to 
cover horses — and these were not provided for little 
ones. 

"The children cuddled in holes and corners about the 
quarters, often in the corners of the huge chimneys 
with their feet in the ashes to keep them warm." 



AN AVERAGE PLANTATION DAY. 391 

An average day of plantation life is thus given : 
" Old and young, male and female, married and sin- 
gle, drop down together on the clay floor of the cabin 
each evening with his or her blanket. The night how- 
ever is shortened at both ends. The slaves work often 
as long as they can see, and are late in cooking and 
mending for the coming day, and at the first grey 
streak of morning are summoned to the field by the 
driver's horn. 

" More slaves are whipped for oversleeping than for 
any other fault. The overseer stands at the quarter 
door, armed with his cowhide, ready to whip any who 
may be a few minutes behind time. When the horn 
is blown, there is a rush for the door, and the hinder- 
most one is sure to get a blow from the overseer. 
Young mothers working in the field were allowed about 
ten o'clock to go home and nurse their children. Some- 
times they are obliged to take their children with them 
and leave them in the corners of the fences, to pre- 
vent loss of time. The overseer rides round the field 
on horseback. A cowskin and a hickory stick are his 
constant companions. The slaves take their breakfast 
with them and eat it in the field. The dinner of the 
slave consists of a huge piece of ash cake, that is to 
say, unbolted corn meal and water, stirred up and 
baked in the ashes. To this a small slice of pork or a 
couple of salt herring were added. A few moments 
of rest is allowed at dinner, which is variously spent. 
Some lie down on the " turning row" and go to sleep. 
Others draw together and talk, others are at work 
with needle and thread mending their tattered gar- 
ments ; but soon the overseer comes dashing in upon 



392 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

them. Tumble up — tumble up is the word, and now 
from twelve o'clock till dark, the human cattle are in 
motion, wielding their clumsy hoes, inspired by no 
hope of reward, no sense of gratitude, no love of chil- 
dren, no prospect of bettering their condition, noth- 
ing save the dread and terror of the driver's lash. So 
goes one day and so comes another." This is slavery 
as remembered by a cultivated, intelligent man who 
was born and bred a slave. 

In regard to his own peculiar lot as a child on this 
plantation, he says: "I was seldom whipped, and 
never severely, by my old master. I suffered little 
from any treatment I received, except from hunger 
and cold. I could get enough neither of food or 
clothing, but suffered more from cold than hunger. 
In the heat of summer or cold of winter alike I was 
kept almost in a state of nudity — no shoes, stockings, 
jacket, trowsers — nothing but a coarse tow linen shirt 
reaching to the knee. This I wore night and day. In 
the daytime I could protect myself pretty well by keep- 
ing on the sunny side of the house, and in bad weath- 
er in the corner of the kitchen chimney. The great 
difficulty was to keep warm at night. I had no bed. 
The pigs in the pen had leaves, and horses in the sta- 
ble had straw, but the children had nothing. In very 
cold weather I sometimes got down the bag in which 
corn was carried to the mill, and got into that. My 
feet have been so cracked by the frost that the pen 
with which I am writing might be laid in the gashes. 

"The manner of taking our meals at old master's, 
indicated but little refinement. Our corn-meal mush, 
when sufficiently cooled, was placed in a large wooden 



THE SLAVE-CHILD'S THOUGHTS. 393 

tray, or trough, like those used in making maple sugar 
here in the north. This tray was set down, either on 
the floor of the kitchen or out of doors on the ground ; 
and the children were called, like so many pigs ; and 
like so many pigs they would come, and literally de- 
vour the mush — some with oyster shells, some with 
pieces of shingles, and none with spoons. He that 
ate fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the 
best place ; and few left the trough really satisfied. I 
was the most unlucky of any, for Aunt Katy had no 
good feeling for me ; and if I pushed any of the other 
children, or if they told her anything unfavorable of 
me, she always believed the worst, and was sure to 
whip me." 

The effect of all this on his childish mind is thus 
told: 

"As I grew older and more thoughtful, I was more 
and more filled with a sense of my wretchedness. The 
cruelty of Aunt Katy, the hunger and cold I suffered, 
and the terrible reports of wrong and outrage which 
came to my ear, together with what I almost daily 
witnessed, led me, when yet but eight or nine years 
old, to wish I had never been born. I used to con- 
trast my condition with the blackbirds, in whose wild 
and sweet songs I fancied them so happy ! Their ap- 
parent joy only deepened the shades of my sorrow. 
There are thoughtful days in the lives of children — at 
least there were in mine — when they grapple with all 
the great primary subjects of knowledge, and reach 
in a moment, conclusions which no subsequent expert 
ence can shake. I was just as well aware of the un- 
just, unnatural, and murderous character of slavery, 



394 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

when nine years old, as I am now. Without any ap- 
peal to books, to laws, or to authorities of any kind, 
it was enough to accept God as a father, to regard 
slavery as a crime." 

Douglass' remarks on the singing of slaves are very 
striking. Speaking of certain days of each month 
when the slaves from the different farms came up to 
the central plantation to get their monthly allowances 
of meal and meat, he says that there was always great 
contention among the slaves as to who should go up 
with the ox team for this purpose. He says : 

"Probably the chief motive of the competitors for 
the place, was a desire to break the dull monotony 
of the field, and to get beyond the overseer's eye 
and lash. Once on the road with an ox team, and 
seated on the tongue of his cart, with no overseer 
to look after him, the slave was comparatively free ; 
and, if thoughtful, he had time to think. Slaves are 
generally expected to sing as well as to work. A si- 
lent slave is not liked by masters or overseers. 'Make 
a noise, 1 'make a noise 1 and 'bear a hand' are the 
words usually addressed to the slaves when there is 
silence amongst them. This may account for the al- 
most constant singing heard in the southern states. 
There was generally more or less singing among the 
teamsters, as it was one means of letting the overseer 
know where they were, and that they were moving 
on with the work. But on allowance day, those who 
visited the great house farm were peculiarly excited 
and noisy. While on their way, they would make the 
dense old woods, for miles around, reverberate with 
their wild notes. These were not always merry be- 



THE MELANCHOLY OF SLAVE SONGS. 395 

cause they were wild. On the contrary, they were 
mostly of a plaintive cast, and told a tale of grief and 
sorrow. In the most boisterous outbursts of raptur- 
ous sentiment, there was ever a tinge of deep melan- 
choly. I have never heard any songs like those any- 
where since I left slavery, except when in Ireland. 
There I heard the same ivailing notes, and was much 
affected by them. It was during the famine of 1845 
-6. In all the songs of the slaves there was ever 
some expression in praise of the great house farm ; 
something which would natter the pride of the owner 
and possibly, draw a favorable glance from him. 

"I am going away to the great house farm, 

O yea ! yea ! O yea ! 
My old master is a good old master, 

O yea ! yea ! yea ! 

****** 
"I did not, when a slave, understand the deep 
meanings of those rude, and apparently incoherent 
songs. I was myself within the circle, so that I neith- 
er saw nor heard as those without might see and hear. 
They told a tale which was then altogether beyond 
my feeble comprehension; they were tones, loud, 
long and deep, breathing the prayer and complaint of 
souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish. Every 
tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to 
God for deliverance from chains. The hearing of 
those wild notes always depressed my spirits, and filled 
my heart with ineffable sadness. The mere recur- 
rence, even now, afflicts my spirit, and while I am 
writing these lines, my tears are falling. To those 
songs I trace my first glimmering conceptions of the 



396 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

dehumanizing character of slavery. I can never get 
rid of that conception. Those songs still follow me, 
to deepen my hatred of slavery, and quicken my sym- 
pathies for my brethren in bonds." 

When Douglass was ten years old a great change 
took place in his circumstances. His old master sent 
him to Baltimore to be a family servant in the house 
of a family connection. 

He speaks with great affection of his new mistress, 
Miss Sophia Auld. It is the southern custom for the 
slave to address a young married lady always by this 
maiden title. She had never before had to do with 
a slave child, and seemed to approach him with all the 
tender feelings of motherhood. He was to have the 
care of her own little son, some years younger, and 
she seemed to extend maternal tenderness to him. 
His clothing, lodging, food were all now those of a 
favored house boy, and his employment to run of er- 
rands and take care of his little charge, of whom he 
was very fond. The kindness and benignity of his 
mistress led the little boy to beg her to teach him to 
read, and the results are thus given : 

"The dear woman began the task, and very soon, 
by her assistance, I was master of the alphabet, and 
could spell words of three or four letters. My mis- 
tress seemed almost as proud of my progress, as if I 
had been her own child ; and supposing that her hus- 
band would be as well pleased, she made no secret of 
what she was doing for me. Indeed, she exultingly 
told him of the aptness of her pupil, of her intention 
to persevere in teaching me, and of the duty which 
she felt it to teach me at least to read the Bible. Here 



MASTER HUGH ON TEACHING SLAVES. 397 

arose the first cloud over my Baltimore prospects, the 
precursor of drenching rains and chilling blasts. 

"Master Hugh was amazed at the simplicity of his 
spouse, and probably for the first time, he unfolded to 
her the true philosophy of slavery, and the peculiar 
rules necessary to be observed by masters and mis- 
tresses, in the management of their human chattels. 
Mr. Auld promptly forbade the continuance of her in- 
struction ; telling her, in the first place, that the thing 
itself was unlawful ; that it was also unsafe, and could 
only lead to mischief. To use his own words, further, 
he said, 'If you give a nigger an inch, he will take 
an ell ; he should know nothing but the will of his 
master, and learn to obey it. Learning would spoil 
the best nigger in the world ; if you teach that nigger' 
— speaking of myself — 'how to read the Bible, there 
will be no keeping him ; it would forever unfit him 
for the duties of a slave, and as to himself, learning 
would do him no good, but probably a great deal of 
harm — making him disconsolate and unhappy. If 
you learn him now to read, he'll want to know how 
to write ; and this accomplished, he'll be running away 
with himself.' Such was the tenor of Master Hugh's 
oracular exposition of the true philosophy of training 
a human chattel ; and it must be confessed that he 
very clearly comprehended the nature and the require- 
ments of the relation of master and slave. His dis- 
course was the first decidedly anti-slavery lecture to 
which it had been my lot to listen. Mrs. Auld evi- 
dently felt the force of his remarks ; and, like an obe- 
dient wife, began to shape her course in the direction 
indicated by her husband. The effect of his words 
25 



398 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

on me was neither slight nor transitory. His iron sen- 
tences, cold and harsh, sunk deep into my heart, and 
stirred up not only my feelings into a sort of rebellion, 
but awakened within me a slumbering train of vital 
thought. It was a new and special revelation, dispel- 
ling a painful mystery, against which my youthful un- 
derstanding had struggled, and struggled in vain, to 
wit : the ivhite man's power to perpetuate the enslave- 
ment of the black man. 'Very well,' thought I, 
'knowledge unfits a child to be a slave.' I instinct- 
ively assented to the proposition ; and from that mo- 
ment I understood the direct pathway from slavery to 
freedom." 

But the desire of learning, once awakened, could not 
be hushed, and though Douglass' mistress forebore his 
teaching, and even became jealously anxious to pre- 
vent his making further progress, he found means to 
continue the instruction. With a spelling-book hid 
away in his bosom, and a few crackers in his pocket, 
he continued to get daily lessons from the street boys 
at intervals when he went back and forth on errands. 
Sometimes the tuition fee was a cracker, and sometimes 
the lesson was given in mere boyish good will. At 
last he made money enough to buy for himself, secret- 
ly, a reading book, "The Columbian Orator." This 
book was prepared for schools during the liberty -loving 
era succeeding the American revolution, when south- 
ern as well as northern men conspired to reprobate 
slavery. There consequently young Fred found most 
inspiring documents. There was a long conversation 
between a master and a slave where a slave defended 
himself for running away by quoting the language of 



EFFECTS OF LEARNING TO READ. 399 

the Declaration of Independence. Douglass also says 
of this book : 

"This, however, was not all the fanaticism which I 
found in this Columbian Orator. I met there one of 
Sheridan's mighty speeches on the subject of Catholic 
Emancipation, Lord Chatham's speech on the Ameri- 
can war, and speeches by the great William Pitt and 
by Fox. These were all choice documents to me, and 
I read them over and over again, with an interest that 
was ever increasing, because it was ever gaining in 
intelligence ; for the more I read them the better I 
understood them. The reading of these speeches ad- 
ded much to my limited stock of language, and ena- 
bled me to give tongue to many interesting thoughts, 
which had frequently flashed through my soul, and 
died away for want of utterance." 

All this knowledge and expansion of mind, of 
course produced at first intellectual gloom and mis- 
ery. All the results of learning to read, predicted by 
the master, had come to pass. He was so morose, so 
changed, that his mistress noticed it, and showered re- 
proaches upon him for his ingratitude. " Poor lady," 
he says, "she did not know my trouble and I dared 
not tell her — her abuse felt like the blows of Balaam 
on his poor ass, she did not know that an angel stood 
in the way " 

" My feelings were not the result of any marked cru- 
elty in the treatment T received ; they sprung from the 
consideration of my being a slave at all. It was slavery 
— not its mere incidents — that I hated. I had been 
cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in 
ignorance ; I saw that slaveholders would have gladly 



400 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

made me believe that they were merely acting under 
the authority of God, in making a slave of me, and 
in making slaves of others ; and I treated them as rob- 
bers and deceivers. The feeding and clothing me well, 
could not atone for taking my liberty from me." 

About this time Douglass became deeply awakened 
to religious things, by the prayers and exhortations of 
a pious old colored slave who was a drayman. He 
could read and his friend could not, but Douglass, now 
newly awakened to spiritual things, read the Bible to 
him, and received comfort from him. He says, " He 
fanned my already intense love of knowledge into a 
flame by assuring me that I was to be a useful man in 
the world. When I would say to him, how can these 
things be, his simple reply was, '■trust in the Lord.'' 
When I told him that I was a slave for life, he said : 
1 The Lord can make you free, my dear. All things 
are possible with him, only have faith in God. If 
you want your liberty, ask the Lord for it in faith, and 
he will give it to you. 1 " Cheered by this advice, Doug- 
lass began to offer daily and earnest prayers for liberty. 

With reference to this he began to turn his thoughts 
towards acquiring the art of writing. He was em- 
ployed as waiter in a ship yard, and watching the in- 
itial letters by which the carpenters marked the dif- 
ferent parts of the ship, and thus in time acquired a 
large part of the written alphabet. This knowledge 
he supplemented by getting one and another boy of 
his acquaintance on one pretence or other, to write 
words or letters on fences or boards. Then he surrep- 
titiously copied the examples in his little master's copy- 
book at home, when his mistress was safely out of the 



DOUGLASS HIRES HIS TIME ABSCONDS. 401 

house, and finally acquired the dangerous and forbid- 
den gift of writing a fluent, handsome current hand. 

He had various reverses after this as he grew in age 
and developed in manliness. He was found difficult 
to manage, and changed from hand to hand like a vic- 
ious intractable horse. Once a celebrated negro 
breaker had a hand upon him, meaning to break his 
will and reduce him to the condition of a contented 
animal, but the old story of Pegasus in harness came 
to pass. The negro breaker gave him up as a bad 
case, and finally his master made a virtue of necessity, 
and allowed him to hire his own time. The bargain 
was that Douglass should pay him three dollars a week, 
and make his own bargains, find his own tools, board 
and clothe himself. The work was that of caulker in 
a ship yard. This, he says, was a nard bargain ; for the 
wear and tear of clothing, the breakage of tools and 
expenses of board made it necessary to earn at least 
six dollars a week, to keep even with the world, and 
this per centage to the master left him nothing beyond 
a bare living. 

But it was a freeman's experience to be able to come 
and go unwatched, and before long it enabled him to 
mature a plan of escape, and the time at last came 
when he found himself a free colored citizen of New 
Bedford, seeking employment, with the privilege of 
keeping his wages for himself. Here, it was that read- 
ing for the first time the Lady of the Lake, he gave 
himself the name of Douglass, and abandoned for- 
ever the family name of his old slaveholding employer. 
Instead of a lazy thriftless young man to be supported 



402 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

by his earnings, he took unto himself an affectionate 
and thrifty wife, and became a settled family man. 

He describes the seeking for freeman's work as rap- 
turous excitement. The thought " I can work, I can 
earn money, I have no master now to rob me of my 
earnings," was a perfect joyous stimulus whenever it 
arose, and he says, "I sawed wood, dug cellars, shov- 
eled coal, rolled oil casks on the wharves, helped to 
load and unload vessels, worked in candle works and 
brass foundries, and thus supported myself for three 
years. I was, he says, now living in a new world, and 
wide awake to its advantages. I early began to at- 
tend meetings of the colored people, in New Bedford, 
and to take part in them, and was amazed to see 
colored men making speeches, drawing up resolutions, 
and offering them for consideration." 

His enthusiasm for self-education was constantly stim- 
ulated. He appropriated some of his first earnings to 
subscribing for the Liberator, and was soon after intro- 
duced to Mr. Garrison. How Garrison appeared to a 
liberated slave may be a picture worth preserving, 
and we give it in Douglass' own words. 

" Seventeen years ago, few men possessed a more 
heavenly countenance than William Lloyd Garrison, 
and few men evinced a more genuine or a more ex- 
alted piety. The Bible was his text book — held sa- 
cred, as the word of the Eternal Father — sinless per- 
fection — complete submission to insults and injuries — 
literal obedience to the injunction, if smitten on one 
side to turn the other also. Not only was Sunday a 
Sabbath, but all days were Sabbaths, and to be kept 
holy. All sectarism false and mischievous — the regen- 



MR. DOUGLASS LITERARY CAREER. 4UJ 

erated, throughout the world, members of one body, 
and the Head Jesus Christ. Prejudice against color 
was rebellion against God. Of all men beneath the 
sky, the slaves, because most neglected and despised, 
were nearest and dearest to his great heart. Those 
ministers who defended slavery from the Bible, were of 
their 'father the devil;' and those churches which 
fellowshipped slaveholders as Christians, were syna- 
gogues of Satan, and our nation was a nation of liars. 
Never loud or noisy — calm and serene as a summer sky, 
and as pure. ' You are the man, the Moses, raised up 
by God, to deliver his modern Israel from bondage,' 
was the spontaneous feeling of my heart, as I sat away 
back in the hall and listened to his mighty words ; 
mighty in truth — mighty in their simple earnestness." 

From this time the course of Douglass is upward. 
The manifest talents which he possessed, led the friends 
of the Anti- Slavery cause to feel that he could serve it 
better in a literary career than by manual labor. 

In the year 1841, a great anti-slavery convention 
was held at Nantucket, where Frederick Douglass ap- 
peared on the stage and before a great audience re- 
counted his experiences. Mr. Garrison followed him, 
and an immense enthusiasm was excited — and Doug- 
lass says : ' That night there were at least a thousand 
Garrisonians in Nantucket." After this the general 
agent of the Anti-Slavery Society came and offered to 
Douglass the position of an agent of that society, with 
a competent support to enable him to lecture through 
the country. Douglass, continually pursuing the work 
of self-education, became an accomplished speaker and 
writer. He visited England, and was received with 



404 FREDERICK DOUGLASS. 

great enthusiasm. The interest excited in him was so 
great that several English friends united and paid the 
sum of one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, for the 
purchase of his liberty. This enabled him to pursue his 
work of lecturer in the United States, to travel unmo- 
lested, and to make himself every way conspicuous 
without danger of recapture. 

He settled himself in Rochester, and established an 
Anti-Slavery paper, called Frederick Douglass' Paper, 
which bore a creditable character for literary execu- 
tion, and had a good number of subscribers in Amer- 
ica and England. 

Two of Frederick Douglass' sons were among the 
first to answer to the call for colored troops, and fought 
bravely in the good cause. Douglass has succeeded in 
rearing an intelligent and cultivated family, and in 
placing himself in the front rank among intelligent 
and cultivated men. Few orators among us surpass 
him, and his history from first to last, is a comment on 
the slavery system which speaks for itself. 








^^2^/ 



CHAPTER XIII. 
PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

Sheridan a Full-Blooded Irishman — The Runaway Horse — Constitutional Fear- 
lessness — Sheridan Goes to West Point — Sheridan's Apprenticeship to War — 
The Fight with the Apaches at Fort Duncan — He is Transferred to Oregon — 
Commands at Fort Yamhill in the Yokima Reservation — The Quarrel among 
the Yokimas — Sheridan Popular with Indians — He thinks he has a Chance to 
be Major Some Day— Sheridan's Shyness with Ladies — He Employs a Substi- 
tute in Waiting on a Lady — Sheridan's Kindness and Efficiency in Office Work 
— He Becomes a Colonel of Cavalry — His Shrewd Defeat of Gen. Chalmers — 
Becomes Brigadier — The Kentucky Campaign against Bragg — Sheridan Saves 
the Battle of Perrysville— Saves the Battle of Murfrcesboro — Gen. Roussean on 
Sheridan's Fighting — Sheridan at Missionary Ridge — Joins Grant as Chief of 
Cavalry — His Raids around Lee — His Campaign in the Valley of Virginia — 
He Moves across and Joins in the Final Operations — His Administration at 
New Orleans — Grant's Opinion of Sheridan. 

Major- General Philip Henry Sheridan is a full- 
blooded Irishman by descent, though American by 
birth. He was born in poverty. So large a share of 
American eminent men have been born poor, that it 
might almost be said that in our country poverty in 
youth is the first requisite for success in life. 

Sheridan's parents, after remaining a few years at 
the east, moved to Ohio, where their son grew up 
with very little schooling, and under the useful neces- 
sity of working for a living. There is a story current 
of his having been put upon a spirited horse when a 
boy of five, by some mischievous mates, and run away 
with to a tavern some miles off. He stuck fast to the 
horse, though without saddle or bridle, and without 
size or strength to use them if he had them. It was 

405 



406 PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

by a mere chance that he arrived safe, and when 
lifted off by the sympathizing family of the inn, the 
little fellow admitted that he was shaken and sore with 
his ride, but he added, u I'll be better to-morrow, and 
then r II ride back home." The incident is of no great 
importance in itself, but it shows that even then the 
boy was already constitutionally destitute of fear. He 
seems to have been made without the peculiar faculty 
which makes people take danger into the account, and 
try to keep at a distance from it. The full possession 
of this deficiency (if the phrase is not too direct a 
contradiction in terms,) is quite uncommon. Admiral 
Nelson had it, as was shown, very much in Sheridan's 
own style, in his boyhood. The future victor of Traf- 
algar had strayed away from home, and got lost. 
When he had been found and taken home, a relative 
remarked, "1 should have thought that fear would 
have kept you from going so far away." "Fear?" 
said the young gentleman quite innocently ; " Fear ? 
I don't know him ! " He never afterwards made his 
acquaintance, either ; nor, it would seem, has Sheri- 
dan. 

When young Sheridan received his appointment to 
a cadetship at West Point, he was driving a water-cart 
in Zanesville, Ohio. The person who actually pro- 
cured the appointment was Gen. Thomas P. Ritchey, 
member of Congress from Sheridan's district. The 
candidate was very young for the appointment, and 
very small of his age, insomuch that his friends con- 
sidered it extremely doubtful whether he would be 
admitted. He was, however, and passed through the 
regular West Point course, in the same class with Gen* 



SHERIDAN'S APPRENTICESHIP. 407 

erals McPherson, Scofield, Terrill, Sill and Tyler, and 
with the rebel general Hood, who was so fearfully 
beaten by Thomas at Nashville. His scholarship was 
not particularly remarkable, and as is often the case 
with pupils who have no particular want of courage, 
high health and spirits, or of the bodily and mental 
qualities for doing things rather than for thinking 
about it, he experienced various collisions of one and 
another kind, with the strict military discipline of the 
institution. 

He graduated in June, 1853, and as there was at 
the moment no vacant second lieutenancy, he was given 
a brevet appointment, and sent out in the next autumn 
to Fort Duncan on the Rio Grande, at the western 
edge of Texas, and in the region haunted by two of 
the most ferocious and boldest of the tribes sometimes 
called on the frontier the "horse Indians" — the Apa- 
ches and Camanches. 

From this time until the rebellion, Lieutenant Sher- 
idan was serving, not exactly his apprenticeship to his 
trade of war, but what would in Germany be called 
his wanderjdhre — his years as wandering journeyman. 
It was an eight years of training in hardships and 
dangers more incessant and more extreme than per- 
haps could be crowded into any life except this of the 
American Indian-fighter ; and doubtless its wild expe- 
riences did much to develop the bodily and mental 
endurance and the coolness and swift energy which 
have characterized Sheridan as a commander. 

For two years Sheridan was at Fort Duncan, and 
was then promoted to first lieutenant, transferred to 
the Fourth Regiment, and after some delay in New 



408 PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

York waiting for some recruits, lie accompanied them 
by sea to the Pacific coast, and immediately on reach- 
ing San Francisco was placed in command of the 
escort for a surveying expedition employed on a 
branch of the Pacific Railroad. On this duty, and 
afterwards in command of posts or on scouts and ex- 
peditions up and down those remote and wild regions, 
the time passed until the outbreak of the war in 1861. 

In the fights and adventures of this rough life, 
Sheridan's soldierly qualities were often exhibited. 
While at Fort Duncan, being outside the fort with 
two men, the three were surprised by a gang of a 
dozen or more Apaches, whose chief, taking it for 
granted that the three had surrendered, jumped down 
from his horse, to tie them up and have them carried 
off. As he did so, Sheridan, quick as lightning, sprang 
up in his place, and goaded the wild mustang at full 
speed to the fort. On reaching it, he called instantly 
to arms, snatched a pair of pistols, and without dis- 
mounting or waiting to see who followed, wheeled 
and flew back as swiftly as he had come. His two 
men were fighting stoutly for their lives. Sheridan 
dashed up and shot the chief. The soldiers, following 
hard after him, charged the savages, and in a moment 
the discomfited Apaches were ridden down, dispersed 
and most of them killed. 

During Sheridan's stay in Oregon, his commanding 
officer, Major Rains, (afterwards the rebel General 
Rains,) made a campaign against the Yokima Indians, 
in which Sheridan did right good service, and so con- 
spicuously at the affair of the Cascades on the Co- 
lumbia, April 28, 1856, as to be, mentioned in general 



THE FIGHT AMONG THE YOKIMAS. 409 

orders with high praise. The Indians having been 
subdued, were placed on a tract called the Yokima 
Reservation, and Sheridan was appointed to command 
a detachment of troops posted among them, to act 
substantially as their governor. He erected a post 
called Fort Yamhill, and remained there for two or 
three years, ruling his wild subjects with a good deal 
of success, and being quite popular with them, as well 
as praised and trusted by his own superiors. An eye- 
witness has told the story of an occurrence at Fort Yam- 
hill, a good deal like the affair of the Apaches at Fort 
Duncan, and which equally illustrates the swift and ve- 
hement courage with which Sheridan always does his 
soldier's work. One day a quarrel arose in the camp 
of the Yokimas, outside the fort. These turbulent 
savages have no more self-control than so many tigers, 
and in a moment their knives were out, and a bloody 
battle-royal was opened. • Sheridan was near enough 
to see that there was a fight, but happened to be 
alone. He put spurs to his horse, hurried to the fort, 
ordered what few soldiers were in sight to follow 
him, turned, set spurs to his horse again, and dash- 
ed on for the Indian camp at the very top of his 
speed ; bare headed, sword in hand, without once look- 
ing round to see if he were followed ; and he charged 
headlong into the fray, riding through the desperate 
Indian knife-fight as though it were a field of standing 
grain. The soldiers felt the powerful magnetism of 
their leader, just as Sheridan's soldiers have always 
felt it ; and, our informant said, every man of them 
drove on, just like his leader, without looking behind 
to see if anybody followed. In they went, striking 



410 PHILIP H. SHERIDAX. 

right and left, and in a moment or two, they had 
charged once or twice through the fight, and it was 
quelled. 

Sheridan was an efficient manager of these Indians, 
and was popular with them, too. Their wild, keen 
instincts appreciate courage and energy, sense and 
kindness, quite as readily as do civilized men. 

When the rebellion broke out, Sheridan was ordered 
East, and on May 14. 1861, was commissioned captain 
in the Thirteenth Regular Infantry. He was soon 
sent to Missouri, where his first actual service in the 
war was a term of office as president of a board for 
auditing military claims. He was soon, however, sent 
into the field as chief quartermaster and commissary 
under Gen. Curtis, and in that capacity served through 
the brilliant and victorious, but terribly severe cam- 
paign in which the desperate battle of Pea Ridge was 
fought. At this time his professional ambition was 
not very high, for he observed one day that u he was 
the sixty-fourth captain on the list, and with the chan- 
ces of war might soon be a major." 

Sheridan is, however, thoroughly modest, and among 
ladies is — or was — even excessively bashful. There 
is an amusing story on this point about this very cam- 
paign. It is, that Sheridan, too bashful to seek for 
himself the company of a certain young lady near 
Springfield, used to furnish a horse and carriage to a 
smart young clerk of his, conditionally that the said 
clerk should take the young lady out to drive and en- 
tertain her — very much as Captain Miles Standish is 
said to have once deputed John Alden on a similar 
errand. The clerk did so, while Captain Sheridan 



E2HDHE88 AND EFFICIENCY EN' OFFICE WORK. 411 

stood in the door and experienced a shy delight in 
seeing how well the substitute did duty. No end is 
known for this story — except, indeed, that Captain 
Sheridan did not marry the lady. 

There are on record some reminiscences of Sheri- 
dan's character as an officer in this campaign, which 
paint him in a very agreeable light, as at ouce ener- 
getic and thorough in duty, and kindly in feeling and 
manner. It was a fellow-officer who thus wrote : 

••The enlisted men on duty at headquarters, or in 
his own bureau, remember him kindly. Xot a clerk 
or orderly but treasures some act of kindness done by 
Captain Sheridan. Never forgetting, nor allowing 
others to forget, the respect due to him and his posi- 
tion, he was yet the most approachable officer at head- 
quarters. His knowledge of the regulations and cus- 
'toms of the army, and of all professional minutiae, 
were ever at the disposal of any proper inquirer. 
Private soldiers are seldom allowed to carry away as 
pleasant and kindly recollections of a superior as those 
with which Captain Sheridan endowed us. * * * 
No man has risen -more rapidly with less jealousy, if 
the feelings entertained by his old associates of the 
Army of the Southwest are any criterion." 1 

Sheridan's next service was as General Halleck's 
chief quartermaster in the Corinth campaign. Halleck 
seems to have thought very well of Sheridan from the 
first, though apparently rather as a trustworthy organ- 
izer and manager, than as such a military son of thun- 
der as he has turned out to be. After a time the na- 
ture of the war in those parts occasioned a great de- 
mand for cavalry officers, and Sheridan being pitched 



412 PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

upon for one, was on May 27, 1862, commissioned 
colonel of the 2d Michigan Cavalry, and was at once 
sent into the field to help impede the retreat of the 
rebels when they should evacuate Corinth. 

In this and other similar work of that campaign, Sher- 
idan became at once known to the army and to his su- 
periors as a splendid officer, and from that time forward 
he rose and rose, up to the very last scene of the Vir- 
ginia campaign, where he wielded the troops that 
struck the most telling of the final blows against Lee. 

His first important service was to take part in Elli- 
ott's Booneville expedition. In June he had a cavalry 
combat with the butcher Forrest, and beat him, and 
was made acting brigadier. In July, having two reg- 
iments with him, he was attacked by the rebel Chal- 
mers with six thousand men. Sheridan's position was 
strong enough, but he saw that he would shortly be 
surrounded and starved out by mere weight of num- 
bers. So he contrived a neat and effective surprise ; 
risky, it is true ; but it is exactly the character of an 
able commander to take risks at the right time, and 
not lose. Sheridan sent round to the enemy's rear, by 
a long detour, a force of about ninety troopers, with 
instructions to fall on at a given time, when he would 
attack in concert with them. This was done ; the 
bold squad fired so fast from their repeating carbines 
that the rebels, startled and perplexed, could not esti- 
mate on the probable number attacking them, and 
were thrown into confusion. At this moment, Sheri- 
dan charged in front with his whole force, and in his 
own manner, and Chalmers' men, instantly breaking, 
fled in total rout, and were pursued twenty miles, leav- 



SAVES THE BATTLE OP PERRYSVILLE. 413 

ing the whole road strewn with weapons, accoutre- 
merits and baggage thrown away in their flight. Gen- 
eral. Grant, at this time Sheridan's department com- 
mander, reported in strong commendation of Sheri- 
dan's conduct in this affair, and asked a brigadier's 
commission for him, which was accordingly given, 
dated July 15th, the day of Chalmers' first attack. 
Sheridan seems to like to be attacked. He is sure of 
himself and of his men, conscious of his own coolness, 
view of the field, recognition of the "critical five sec- 
onds," and promptness in moving, and he prepares a 
return stroke apparently quite as gladly as he admin- 
isters a first assault. 

When, in the summer of 1862, General Bragg ad- 
vanced by a line far east of the Union forces in the 
valley of the Mississippi, with the idea of reaching 
the Ohio, and carrying the war into the North, Grant 
sent Sheridan to Buell, commanding in Kentucky, who 
gave him a division and placed him in command of 
Louisville. Here Sheridan in one night completed a 
tolerable line of defence, and waited with confidence 
for an attack, but Bragg never got so far. On Bragg's 
retreat was fought the battle of Perrysville, which 
was given by the rebel leader to gain time for his 
trains to escape from the rapid pursuit of the Union 
army. In this battle, Sheridan with his division held 
the key of the Union position, repulsed several des- 
perate assaults, and twice, charging in his turn, drove 
the rebels from their positions before him. His divi- 
sion lost heavily, but he inflicted heavier losses on the 
rebels, and his prompt tactics and keen fighting saved 
the Union army from defeat. 
26 



414 PHILIP EL SHERIDAN. 

In the terrible fight of Stone River, or Murfrees- 
boro', Sheridan's part, instead of being merely credit- 
able or handsome, was glorious and decisive. But for 
him, that great battle would have been a tremendous 
defeat. How desperate the need of the crisis that 
Sheridan met there, and how well he met it, may 
somewhat appear from the terms used by the best his- 
torian thus far of that battle, in prefacing the detailed 
account which he gives of the fighting of Sheridan 
and his men. Mr. Swinton says : 

"The difference between troops is great; the differ- 
ence between officers is immensely greater. While 
the two right divisions of McCook were being assailed 
and brushed away, an equal hostile pressure fell upon 
his left division (Sheridan's). But here a quite other 
result attended the enemy's efforts ; for not only were 
the direct attacks repulsed with great slaughter, but 
when the flank of the division was uncovered by the 
withdrawal of the troops on its right, its commander 
effecting a skilful change of front, threw his men into 
position at right angles with his former line, and hav- 
ing thus made for himself a new flank, buffeted with 
such determined vigor and such rapid turns of offence, 
that for two hours he held the Confederates at bay — 
hours precious, priceless, wrenched from fate and an 
exultant foe by the skill and courage of this officer, and 
bought by the blood of his valiant men. This officer 
was Brigadier-General P. H. Sheridan." 

Few fights were ever more splendidly soldierly than 
this of Sheridan's. We cannot detail it; but when 
left with his flank totally uncovered, and where he 
would have been perfectly justified in retreating, he 



SAVES THE BATTLE OF MURFREESBORO. 415 

changed front under fire — the most difficult of all mil- 
itary manoeuvres, repulsed the triumphant enemy four 
times, held his ground until all three of his brigade 
commanders were shot ; fought until all his ammuni- 
tion was gone, and no more to be had ; then took to 
charging with the cold steel ; and when at last he had 
to retreat, he brought off in good order the force that 
was left, "with compact ranks and empty cartridge 
boxes," having lost seventeen hundred and ninety-six 
brave men, and having gained the time which saved 
the battle ; and reporting to Rosecrans, he said with 
sorrow, "Here is all that are left." The hot blooded 
Rousseau, who had been sent with his reserves into the 
dark, close cedar thickets where Sheridan was fighting, 
described the scene in words that enable the imagina- 
tion to conceive what must have been the reality of 
which a soldier spoke thus : 

"I knew it was hell in there before I got in, but I 
was convinced of it when I saw Phil Sheridan, with 
hat in one hand and sword in the other, fighting as if 
he were the devil incarnate, or had a fresh indulgence 
from Father Tracy every five minutes." 

Father Tracy was Rosecrans' chaplain — Rosecrans 
and Sheridan both being Catholics. It may be added 
that those who know Sheridan's battle manners, may 
perhaps suspect that he needed indulgence for some 
offence in words as well as deeds. Gen. Sheridan was 
made major-general for his services at Murfreesboro'. 

We cannot do more than hastily sum up the later 
and even more brilliant portion of Sheridan's splendid 
career ; and indeed it is so much better known that 
the task is the less needful. Sheridan was active and 



416 PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

useful during Rosecrans' advance on Chattanooga. At 
the defeat of Chickamauga, his services were so con- 
spicuous in making the best of a bad matter, that 
Rosecrans in his report, "commended him to his coun- 
try." 

Grant now succeeded Rosecrans, and gained the 
battle of Chattanooga, Monday, Nov. 23, 1863. In 
the storming of Missionary Ridge, which was the cen- 
tral glory of that fight, Sheridan and his men bore a 
conspicuous part. When Grant was made Lieutenant 
General, he quickly ordered Sheridan to report at 
Washington. Sheridan went, not knowing whether 
for praise or blame, and was placed in command of all 
the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac. When 
Grant crossed the Rapidan, and began that bloody 
and toilsome, but shattering and finally decisive series 
of movements which ended with the surrender of the 
Rebellion, Sheridan and his horsemen were employed 
in reconnoitering and guarding trains. May 9th, he 
set out on a raid around the rear of Lee's army, in 
which he cut up communications, destroyed supplies, 
and rescued prisoners ; beat the rebel cavalry, killing 
its leader, J. E. B. Stuart; penetrated within two 
miles of Richmond, thoroughly frightening the rebel 
capital ; extricated his force from a very difficult posi- 
tion on the Chickahominy, by his peculiar style of 
swift manoeuvre and furious fighting ; and came safe 
through at last to Butler's headquarters. 

On another similar expedition in June, he severely 
damaged the rebel routes of supply to Richmond from 
the north and west ; and for some time after that, his 
cavalry were overrunning the country south of Peters- 



SHERIDAN IN THE VALLEY. 417 

burg and Richmond, while Grant was establishing him- 
self in the lines before Petersburg. 

Sheridan's great historic campaign in the Valley of 
Virginia was the crowning glory of his splendid career 
in the war ; a career perhaps more brilliant with the 
gleams of battles than that of any other commander. 
This fatal valley had from the very beginning of the 
war been the opprobrium of the Union armies. From it 
came General Johnston and those forces that reinforc- 
ed Beauregard at Bull Run, and turned that nap-haz- 
ard fight into a victory for the rebels. Through it, 
alternating with the ground east of the Blue Ridge, 
the rebels moved backward and forward, as they 
chose, like a checker-player in the "whip-row." In 
it, one Union commander after another had been de- 
feated and made to look ridiculous ; and it was the 
road along which every invasion of the North, east of 
the mountains, was laid out, as a matter of course. 

Sheridan turned this den of disgraces into a theatre 
all ablaze with victories. He was appointed to the 
command Aug. 7, 1864 ; for six or seven weeks simply 
covered the harvests from the rebel foragers ; during 
September was at last given leave by Grant to deliver 
battle ; September 19th, defeated Early at Winchester; 
September 2 2d, defeated him again at Fisher's Hill, 
whither he had retreated ; and when the rebel com- 
mander retreated again to the far southern passes of 
the Blue Ridge, Sheridan laid the southern part of the 
valley thoroughly waste, to prevent the enemy from 
finding support in it; on the 19th of October, after 
his army had been surprised by the persevering Early, 
defeated, and driven in disorder five miles, Sheridan 



418 PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 

faced it about, and turned the defeat into the most 
dramatic, brilliant and famous of all his victories. 

In February of the following year, Sheridan took a 
place in that vast ring of bayonets and sabres with 
which Grant sought to envelop the remaining armies 
of the rebellion. On the 27th of that month, he 
moved rapidly up the valley of his victories, ran over 
what was left of Early's force, smashed it and captured 
two-thirds of it almost without stopping, then crossed 
the Ridge, destroyed the James river canal, and break- 
ing up railroads and bridges as he went, rode across 
the country to White House, and thence once more 
joined Grant below Petersburg. Last of all, in the 
final campaign from March 29th to Lee's surrender on 
April 9th, Sheridan and his troops were the strong 
left hand of Grant in all those operations ; thrust fur- 
thest out around Lee, feeling and feeling after him, 
clutching him whenever there was a chance, crushing 
him like a vice at every grasp, and throttling him with 
relentless force, until the very power of further resist- 
ance was gone, and that proposed charge of Sheri- 
dan's which was stopped by Lee's flag of truce, would 
really have been made upon an almost helpless and 
disorganized mass of starving, worn-out soldiers and 
disordered wagon-trains. 

General Sheridan's administration as military gov- 
ernor at New Orleans, was a surprise to his friends, 
from its exhibition of broad and high administrative 
qualities. Yet there is much that is alike in the abili- 
ties of a good general and a good ruler. Gen. Grant 
is a very wise judge of men, and his brief and char- 
acteristic record of his estimate of Sheridan might 



GRANT'S OPINION OF SHERIDAN. 419 

have justified hopes equal to the actual result. To 
any one remembering also his early days of authority 
over the Yokimas in Oregon, it would doubtless have 
done so ; for a Yokima community and the community 
of an "unreconstructed" southern rebel city are a 
good deal alike in many things. What Grant said of 
Sheridan was as follows, and was sent to Secretary 
Stanton just after Cedar Creek, and a little while before 
Sheridan's appointment as Major-General in the Regu- 
lar Army, in place of McClellan, resigned : 

"City Point, Thursday, Oct. 20, 8 p. m. 

Hon. E. M. Stanton, etc. : 

I had a salute of one hundred guns from each of the 
armies here fired in honor of Sheridan's last victory. 
Turning what bid fair to be a disaster into a glorious 
victory, stamps Sheridan what I always thought him, 
one of the ablest of generals. 

U. S. Grant, Lieutenant- General." 

The extraordinary series of popular ovations which 
have attended Sheridan's recent tour through part of 
the North, have proved that he is profoundly admired, 
honored and loved by all good citizens ; and unless we 
except Grant, probably Sheridan is the most popular 
— and deservedly the most popular — of all the com- 
manders in the war. Such a popularity, and won not 
by words but by deeds, is an enviable possession. 




^-x^e: 



CHAPTER XIV. 

WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

.The Result of Eastern Blood and Western Developments — Lincoln, Grant, 
Chase and Sherman Specimens of it — The Sherman Family Character— Hon. 
Thomas Ewing adopts Sherman — Character of the Boy — He Enters West 
Point — His Peculiar Traits Showing thus Early — How he Treated his " Pleb " 
— His Early Military Service — His Appearance as First Lieutenant — Marries 
and Resigns — Banker at San Francisco — Superintendent of Louisiana Military 
Academy — His Noble Letter Resigning the Superintendency — He Foresees a 
Great War — Cameron and Lincoln Think not — Sherman at Bidl Run — He 
Goes to Kentucky — Wants Two Hundred Thousand Troops— The False Re- 
port of his Insanity — Joins Grant ; His Services at Shiloh — Services in the 
Vicksburg Campaigns — Endurance of Sherman and his Army — Sherman's es- 
timate of Grant — How to live on the enemy — Prepares to move from Atlanta — 
The Great March — His Courtesy to the Colored People — His Foresight in War 
— Sherman on Office-Holding. 

Many men of a very lofty grade of power and ex- 
cellence have arisen in our country, among a class who 
may be described as of Eastern blood but Western de- 
velopment. They have themselves been born at the 
East, or else their parents had either lived there or 
had been trained in the ways of the East. Then, 
growing up in the freer atmosphere, the more sponta- 
neous life, the larger scale of being, of the West, they 
have as it were, themselves enlarged in mind, and have 
seemingly become better fitted to cope with vast exe- 
cutive problems. Thus, President Lincoln was of 
Eastern Quaker blood; General Grant, of Connecticut 
blood ; Secretary Chase, of New Hampshire blood ; 
General Sherman, of Connecticut blood; but they 
were all either of Western birth or else trained up in 
Western habits of thought, sentiment and action. The 



424 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

West is larger, stronger, freer, than the East, and it 
affords a better opportunity for great, spontaneous and 
powerful men. 

Perhaps no family in the whole United States was 
better adapted to supply first-class men by this pro- 
cess than the Shermans'. For generations they have 
been of strong, practical, thoughtful minds, employed 
in the highest occupations, laborious and efficient in 
action, pure and lofty in moral tone and character. 
Roger Minot Sherman, the Revolutionary statesman, 
was of this stock, though not in the same direct line 
with the General. General Sherman's grandfather, 
Hon. Taylor Sherman, was long a judge in Connecti- 
cut, and his father, Hon. Charles R. Sherman, was also 
a judge, having occupied the bench of the Superior 
Court of Ohio during the last six years of his life. He 
died in 1829, leaving his widow in narrow circum- 
stances, with eleven children. Of these, Charles T. 
Sherman, the eldest, has since been a successful law- 
yer at Washington ; William Tecumseh, the General, 
was the sixth, and John, the energetic, loyal and useful 
Senator from Ohio, the seventh. The name of Tecum- 
seh was given in consequence of Judge Sherman's ad- 
miration of the noble qualities of that famous chief. 

Thomas Ewing, the eminent Whig politician, speak- 
er and statesman, had been an intimate personal friend 
of Judge Sherman, and when the boy, in those days 
commonly called by the unlovely nickname of "Cump," 
from his Indian name of Tecumseh, was about nine 
years old, Mr. Ewing kindly adopted him and as- 
sumed the entire charge of his support and education. 



SHERMAN AT WEST POINT. 425 

Mr. Ewing, in speaking to one of General Sherman's 
biographers of his character as a boy, described him as 
not particularly noticeable otherwise than as a good 
scholar and a steady, honest, intelligent fellow. He 
said that he "never knew so young a boy who would 
do an errand so promptly and correctly as he did. 
He was transparently honest, faithful, and reliable. 
Studious and correct in his habits, his progress in edu. 
cation was steady and substantial." 

In 1836, Mr. Ewing was a member of Congress 
from Ohio, and having the right to nominate a cadet 
at West Point, he offered the appointment to his adopt- 
ed son, who gladly accepted it, and went successfully 
through the course of study, graduating in 1840. It 
is a good illustration of the wholesome stringency of 
the discipline there, that Sherman's class was a hun- 
dred and forty strong when it entered, but only forty- 
two were left to graduate. The rest had fainted by 
the way for lack of knowledge or energy, or had been 
dismissed for some fault. In this " Gideon's band " of 
forty-two, Sherman stood sixth. A short extract from 
one of his letters while a cadet shows a curious speci- 
men of the same mixture of peremptory sternness in 
exacting duties and substantial kindness to those who 
deserved it but no otJiers, which have so often been 
noted in him since. He writes about the freshman 
who was according to custom under his particular 
charge, by the local appellation of a " pleb," as fol- 
lows: 

"As to lording it over the plebs, * * * I had 
only one, whom I made, of course, tend to a pleb's 
duty, such as bringing water, policing the tent, clean- 



426 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

ing my gun and accoutrements and the like, and re- 
paid in the usual and cheap coin — advice ; and since 
we have commenced studying, I make him bone (i. e. 
study,) and explain to him the difficult parts of alge- 
bra and the French grammar, since he is a good one 
and a fine fellow ; but should he not carry himself 
straight I should have him found (i. e., rejected at ex- 
amination) in January and sent off, that being the 
usual way in such cases, and then take his bed, table 
and chair, to pay for the Christmas spree." It is evi- 
dent that while he was well enough satisfied to help 
his "fine fellow," he would not have cried much while 
he saw him turned away if for sufficient cause, or when 
he proceeded to confiscate his scanty furniture. 

Sherman was commissioned at graduating, Second 
Lieutenant in the third U. S. Artillery ; in November 
1841 joined his company at Fort Pierce, in East Flor- 
ida ; in January 1842 became First Lieutenant, and 
served successfully at different points in Florida, at 
Fort Morgan on Mobile Point, Fort Moultrie in Charles- 
ton Harbor, and other posts in the South, for some 
years. During this time the natural elevation of his 
character saved him from the frivolous or shameful in- 
dulgences too often fallen into by officers on garrison 
duty ; he read and studied works on his profession, 
acquainted himself with the common law, and amused 
himself with petting birds and beasts, fishing, hunting 
and occasionally with visiting.' 

When the Mexican War broke out he was at first 
sent on recruiting duty, but he quickly set to work to 
beg for active service, and on June 29, 1846, he at last 
received an order to join his company at New York, 



SHERMAN AS FIRST LIEUTENANT. 427 

on the way to California, to meet Kearny's expedition 
across the plains. He set out the very next day, with- 
out waiting to visit even Miss Ewing, his guardian's 
daughter, to whom he was engaged, and sailed with 
his company in the storeship Lexington, under the 
command of Lieut Theodorus Bailey, now Rear-Ad. 
miral. General Ord and General Halleck were fellow 
lieutenants with Sherman, and sailed with him. An ac- 
count written by a shipmate during this voyage, thus 
describes Sherman: 

" The first lieutenant was a tall, spare man, appar- 
ently about thirty years of age, with sandy hair and 
whiskers, and a reddish complexion. Grave in his 
demeanor, erect and soldierly in his bearing, he was 
especially noticeable for the faded and threadbare ap- 
pearance of his uniform. * * * He was charac- 
terized at this time by entire devotion to his profession 
in all its details. His care for both the comfort and 
discipline of his men was constant and unwearied." 

His California campaigns were not very adventurous, 
but he became reputed an excellent business officer 
in his staff appointment as assistant adjutant-general. 
Returning in 1850, he married Miss Ewing, May 1st, 
of that year. In September he was made a commis- 
sary of subsistence with the rank of Captain ; in March 
1851, was commissioned brevet Captain, "for merito- 
rious services in California," and in September 1853, 
seeing no prospects in the army that satisfied him, he 
resigned, and became manager of Lucas, Miner & Go's 
branch banking house at San Francisco. 

It is probable that the superintendency of the Lou- 
isiana State Military Academy, which with a salary of 



428 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

$5,000 was offered to him and accepted in 1860, was 
intended to secure his own co-operation in case of se- 
cession, or at least his services in training southern of- 
ficers. But his term of office was not long ; although 
as has been sarcastically observed, " since then, he has 
had the opportunity to still further educate his former 
pupils." He had not been in his new post a half year, 
when, foreseeing the necessary result of the counsels 
of the South, and not waiting for the overt act which 
almost all other good citizens needed to open their 
eyes, he decided upon his course, and wrote to Gover- 
nor Moore a letter which has been often printed, but 
which cannot be too often printed ; a noble and sim- 
ple avowal of patriotic principle and duty. It was as 
follows : 

January 8, 1861. 
" Governor Thomas 0. Moore, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: 

" Sir: — As I occupy a quasi- military position under 
this State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I ac- 
cepted such position when Louisiana was a State in 
the Union, and when the motto of the seminary was 
inserted in marble over the main door, ' By the liber- 
ality of the General Government of the United States. 
The Union : Esto Perpetual 

"Recent events foreshadow a great change, and it 
becomes all men to choose. If Louisiana withdraws 
from the Federal Union, I prefer to maintain my alle- 
giance to the old Constitution as long as a fragment of 
it survives, and my longer stay here would be wrong 
in every sense of the word. In that event, I beg you 
will send or appoint some authorized agent to take 
charge of the arms and munitions of war here belong- 



HE FORESEES A GREAT WAR. 429 

ing to the State, or direct me what disposition should 
be made of them. 

"And furthermore, as President of the Board of Su- 
pervisors, I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve 
me as superintendent the moment the State determines 
to secede ; for on no earthly account will I do any act, 
or think any thought, hostile to or in defiance of the 
old Government of the United States. 

With great respect, &o, 
(Signed,) W. T. SHERMAN." 

The rebels had lost their general. His resignation 
was at once accepted, and Sherman went to St. Louis, 
where he had left his family, and impatient of idleness, 
became superintendent of a street railroad company, 
and so remained until after the surrender of Sumter. 

He now went to Washington and offered his services 
to Government. Secretary Cameron replied, " The 
ebullition of feeling will soon subside ; we shall not 
need many troops." Mr. Lincoln replied, " We shall 
not need many men like you ; the storm will soon blow 
over." In short, Sherman could not make anybody 
believe him, and he experienced a good deal of the 
disagreeable fate of prophets of evil ; and not for the 
last time either. But he was totally unmoved in his 
conviction ; he refused to have any thing to do with 
raising three-months' men, saying, "You might as well 
attempt to put out the flames of a burning house with 
a squirt-gun ;" and he still vainly urged the govern- 
ment with all his might to fling the whole military 
power of the country at once upon the rebellion and 



430 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN 

crush the beginning of it. When, however, the reg- 
ular army was enlarged, Sherman applied for a com- 
mand in the new force, and Gen. McDowell readily 
procured him a commission as Colonel of the 13th 
Regular Infantry, and in the meanwhile, the regiment 
not being yet raised, he served as brigadier in the bat- 
tle of Bull Run, under Gen. Tyler, commanding a di- 
vision. 

In this defeat, Sherman and his brigade did very 
creditably. His promptitude in going into action, and 
his good fighting, were of great use in gaining the 
advantages of the beginning of the battle; he did 
not retreat until ordered to do so, and retired in com- 
paratively good order. He used his natural freedom 
and plainness of speech in observing upon the conduct 
of his own officers and men during the battle, and made 
enemies thereby ; but he had so clearly shown himself 
a good and ready soldier, that when his brother the 
Senator and the Ohio delegation urged his appointment 
as brigadier-general of volunteers it was soon given 
him, and after remaining in the Army of the Potomac 
until September, 1861, he was sent to Kentucky, as 
second in command under Gen. Anderson, commanding 
the department. A month afterwards, Anderson's 
health having broken down, Sherman succeeded him. 

In a few days, Mr. Secretary Cameron, and Adju- 
tant-General Lorenzo Thomas, came to Louisville, in a 
hurry to have the new department commander beat 
the rebels and secure Kentucky to the Union. Sher- 
man knew war, almost intuitively ; he knew the re- 
sources and the spirit of the rebels, and the military 
characteristics of Kentucky, and of Tennessee behind 



FALSE REPORTS OF HIS INSANITY. 431 

it. "How many troops," asked the Secretary of War, 
"do you require in your department?" " Sixty thou- 
sand," answered Sherman, "to drive the enemy out of 
Kentucky ; two hundred thousand to finish the war in 
this section." This seems to have struck the two in- 
quirers as sheer nonsense ; and in the adjutant-gene- 
ral's report, which — as if to help the rebels to as full 
information as possible — was at once printed in all the 
newspapers, with full particulars of the state of the 
armies at the west, Sherman's estimate was barely an- 
nounced, without explanation or comment. All those 
persons who understood less of war than Sherman, 
now at once set him down for a man of no sense or 
judgment. A disreputable newspaper correspondent, 
enraged at Sherman for some reason, seized the oppor- 
tunity to set afloat a story that Sherman was actually 
crazy, and the lie was really believed by multitudes all 
over the United States. The war-prophet was misun- 
derstood and despised again, even more remarkably 
than when he foretold a long war, before Bull Run. 
Sherman's official superiors so far sympathised with 
this clamor as to supersede him by Gen. Buell, and to 
send him to Gen. Halleck, who had faith enough left 
in him to put him in charge of the recruiting rendez- 
vous at Benton Barracks, St. Louis. 

Here he remained, hard at work on mere details, all 
winter. When Grant, having taken Fort Henry, came 
down the Tennessee, and turning about, ascended the 
Cumberland, to attack Donelson, Gen. Sherman was 
ordered to Paducah, to superintend the sending for- 
ward of supplies and reinforcements, a duty which he 
performed with so much speed and efficiency, that 
27 



432 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

Gen. Grant reported himself "greatly indebted for his 
promptness.' 1 

After Donelson. Sherman was appointed to the fifth 
of the six divisions in which Grant organized the 
army with which he advanced by Nashville to Shiloh ; 
the greenest of all the divisions, no part of it having 
been under fire, or even under military discipline. At 
the battle of Shiloh, Sherman's troops, with the mag- 
nificent inborn courage of the western men. green as. 
they were, fought like veterans ; and his and McCler- 
nand's divisions were the only part of Grant's army 
that at all held their ground, and even this was only 
done after twiee tailing back to new positions, in con- 
sequence of the giving way of troops on either hand. 
It was with Sherman that Grant agreed, before he 
knew of the close approach of reinforcements, to at- 
tack in the morning ; and after the disappointed Beau- 
regard had retreated next day, it was Sherman who 
moved his division in pursuit ; although the exhausted 
and disorganized condition of the troops prevented 
continuing the pursuit. He was severely wounded by 
a bullet through the left hand on the first day of the 
fight ; bandaged the wound and kept on fighting ; 
was wounded again the next day, and had three 
horses shot under him, but rode out the battle on the 
fourth. Though the very first battle in which he had 
held an independent command — for it was to a great 
degree such — so thoroughly was he master of the 
"profession in all its details." to which he had seemed 
so devoted when a lieutenant on shipboard, that he 
seems to have found no embarrassment in using all 
the resources which any commander could have em- 



SHERMAN AT SHILOH. 433 

ployed in his place. Halleck, a man sparing of com- 
pliments, in asking that Sherman should be made 
major-general of volunteers, said: "It is the unanim- 
ous opinion here that Brigadier- General W. T. Sher- 
man saved the fortunes of the day on the 6th, and 
contributed largely to the glorious victory of the 7th." 

And General Grant, whose noble friendship with 
Sherman, beginning about this time, has continued 
unbroken ever since, spoke subsequently in still more 
decided and generous terms, when asking for Sherman 
a commission as brigadier in the regular service. He 
wrote to the War Department : 

"At the battle of Shiloh, on the first day, he held, 
with raw troops, the key point of the landing. It is 
no disparagefnent to any other officer to say, that I 
do not believe there was another division commander 
on the field who had the skill and experience to have 
done it. To his individual efforts I am indebted for 
the success of that battle." 

During the following operations against and 
around Corinth, Sherman and his division did 
most excellent service. He had now received his 
commission as a major-general of volunteers. When 
Grant became commander of the Department of the 
Tennessee, in July, 1862, at the time of Halleck's ap- 
pointment as general-in-chief, he placed Sherman in 
command of the bitterly and perseveringly rebel city 
of Memphis, which Sherman governed sternly, shrewd- 
ly, thoroughly and well, under the laws of war, until 
autumn. 

In Grant's first attempt against Vicksburg, Sher- 
man's attack by Chickasaw Bluffs, was an important 



434 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

part of the plan. It failed, because the other parts — 
Grant's march in consequence of the surrender of 
Holly Springs, and Banks' movement from New Or- 
leans for other reasons — did not succeed ; but Grant, 
in afterwards examining the ground, said that Sher- 
man's arrangement was "admirable." 

The capture of the strong rebel fort at Arkansas 
Post, January 11, 1863, was a suggestion of General 
Sherman's, who commanded the land force which car- 
ried the fort, after one day's fire, with the hearty help 
of Admiral Porter's fleet. 

In Grant's successive attempts against Vicksburg, 
Sherman was an indefatigable and most efficient help- 
er. In the final move across the river south of the 
place, Sherman co-operated by amusing the enemy 
with a false attack at Haines' Bluff, which was kept 
up with great ostentation during two days, a large 
rebel force being thus detained from going down the 
river to oppose Grant's crossing there. In the series 
of marches and battles that cut off Johnston from 
Pemberton, destroyed the military importance for the 
time being of the city of Jackson, and drove Pember- 
ton into the lines of Vicksburg ; and during the siege, 
in effectually preventing any chance of relief from 
Johnston, Sherman's services were constant and val- 
uable. Instantly upon the surrender, he moved his 
army corps against Jackson, where Johnston had halt- 
ed, and by way of finish to the campaign, drove him 
out, and thoroughly broke up the railroad lines meet- 
ing there. We quote again Grant's frank acknowledg- 
ment of the services of his great lieutenant : 



HIS SERVICES AT VICKSBURG. 435 

" The siege of Vicksburg and last capture of Jackson 
and dispersion of Johnston's army entitle Gen. Sherman 
to more credit than generally falls to the lot of one man 
to earn. His demonstration at Haines' Bluff, * * * his 
rapid marches to join the army afterwards ; his man- 
agement at Jackson, Mississippi, in the first attack ; 
his almost unequaled march from Jackson to Bridge- 
port, and passage of Black River ; his securing Wal- 
nut Hills on the 18th of May, attest his great merit as 
a soldier." 

General Sherman's commission as brigadier in the 
regular army, dated July 4, 1863, the day of the fall 
of Vicksburg, reached him August 14th, following; 
and we quote a passage of his letter to General Grant 
on the occasion, for the pleasant purpose of recording 
it near Grant's expressions of obligation to Sherman : 

"I had the satisfaction to receive last night the ap- 
pointment as brigadier-general in the regular army, 
with a letter from General Halleck, very friendly and 
complimentary in its terms. I know that I owe this to 
your favor, and beg to acknowledge it, and add, that I 
value the commission far less than the fact that this 
will associate my name with yours and McPherson's in 
opening the Mississippi, an achievement the import- 
ance of which cannot be over-estimated. 

"I beg to assure you of my deep personal at- 
tachment, and to express the hope that the chances 
of war will leave me to serve near and under you till 
the dawn of that peace for which we are contending, 
with the only purpose that it shall be honorable and 
lasting." 



436 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

Rosecrans was defeated at Chickauiauga by Bragg, 
Sept. 19th and 20th, 1863. On this, Grant was placed 
in command of the whole Military Division of the 
Mississippi, and Sherman under him over the Depart- 
ment of the Tennessee. He was at once set to march 
his troops four hundred miles across to Grant at Chat- 
tanooga; accomplished it with wonderful energy, 
skill and speed ; commanded Grant's left at the battle 
of Chattanooga, beginning the fight, and sustaining and 
drawing the rebel attacks until their center was weaken- 
ed enough to enable the Union center under Thomas 
to storm Missionary Ridge, and win the battle. After 
the victory and the enemy's pursuit, Sherman's force 
was sent straightway northward a further hundred 
miles, to relieve Burnside, now perilously beset in 
Knoxville. Colonel Bowman thus powerfully states 
the task which this energetic and enduring commander 
and army performed : 

"A large part of Sherman's command had marched 
from Memphis, had gone into battle immediately on 
arriving at Chattanooga, and had had no rest since. 
In the late campaign officers and men had carried no 
luggage and provisions. The week before, they had 
left their camps, on the right bank of the Tennessee, 
with only two days' rations, without a change of clo- 
thing, stripped for the fight, each officer and man, 
from the commanding general down, having but a 
single blanket or overcoat. They had now no provi- 
sions save what had been gathered by the road, and 
were ill supplied for such a march. Moreover, the 
weather was intensely cold. But twelve thousand of 
their fellow-soldiers were beleaguered in a mountain 



Sherman's estimate of grant. 437 

town eighty-four miles distant; they needed relief, 
and must have it in three days. This was enough. 
Without a murmur, without waiting for anything, the 
Army of the Tennessee directed its course upon Knox- 
ville." 

This vigorous forced march was entirely successful ; 
Longstreet, after one violent and vain assault against 
Burnside's works, fled eastward into Virginia, and 
Sherman, returning and placing his troops in camp to 
rest and refresh, returned to Memphis. While there, 
March 10, 1864, he received that simple and noble 
letter from Grant, acknowledging the latter's obliga- 
tions to Sherman and McPherson, which we have cop- 
ied in our chapter on General Grant. We quote Sher- 
man's reply, which is indeed not less interesting than 
the letter as a display of frank and manly friendship, 
and which moreover contains one of Sherman's char- 
acteristic prophecies, viz., the final allusion to the 
winding up of the war by the " Great March," and the 
siege of Richmond, when the West should once more 
have been made sure : 

"Dear General: — I have your more than kind 
and characteristic letter of the 4th inst. I will send 
a copy to General McPherson at once. 

"You do yourself injustice and us too much 
honor in assigning to us too large a share of 
the merits which have led to your high advancement. 
I know you approve the friendship I have ever pro- 
fessed to you, and will permit me to continue, as here- 
tofore, to manifest it on all proper occasions. 

"You are now Washington's legitimate successor, and 
occupy a position of almost dangerous elevation ; but 



438 WILLIAM T. SHERMAM. 

if you can continue, as heretofore, to be yourself, 
simple, honest and unpretending, you will enjoy 
through life the respect and love of friends, and the 
homage of millions of human beings, that will award 
you a large share in securing to them and their de- 
scendants a government of law and stability. 

"I repeat, you do General McPherson and myself 
too much honor. At Belmont you manifested your 
traits — neither of us being near. At Donelson, also, 
you illustrated your whole character. I was not near, 
and General McPherson in too subordinate a capacity 
to influence you. 

"Until you had won Donelson, I confess I was al- 
most cowed by the terrible array of anarchical ele- 
ments that presented themselves at every point ; but 
that admitted a ray of light I have followed since. 

"I believe you are as brave, patriotic, and just as 
the great prototype, Washington — as unselfish, kind- 
hearted, and honest as a man should be — but the chief 
characteristic is the simple faith in success you have 
always manifested, which I can liken to nothing else 
than the faith a Christian has in the Saviour. 

" This faith gave you victory at Shiloh and Vicks- 
burg. Also, when you have completed your prepara- 
tions, you go into battle without hesitation, as at Chat- 
tanooga — no doubts — no reverses ; and I tell you it 
was this that made us act with confidence. I knew, 
wherever I was, that you thought of me, and if I got 
in a tight place you would help me out, if alive. 

"My only point of doubts was in your knowledge 
of grand strategy, and of books of science and histo- 



Sherman's estimate of grant. 439 

ry ; but I confess, your common sense seems to have 
supplied all these. 

"Now, as to the future. Don't stay in Washington. 
Come West ; take to yourself the whole Mississippi 
Valley. Let us make it dead sure — and I tell you, 
the Atlantic slopes and Pacific shores will follow its 
destiny, as sure as the limbs of a tree live or die with 
the main trunk. We have done much, but still much 
remains. Time and time's influences are with us. We 
could almost afford to sit still, and let these influences 
work. 

" Here lies the seat of the coming empire, and from 
the West, when our task is done, we will make short 
work of Charleston and Richmond, and the impov- 
erished coast of the Atlantic. 

Your sincere friend, 

W. T. SHERMAN." 

When Grant was appointed Lieutenant-General, 
Sherman succeeded him in the great command of the 
Department of the Mississippi; and accompanying 
Grant from Nashville to Cincinnati on the road of the 
former to Washington, the two great commanders on 
the way and at the Burnet House in Cincinnati, agreed 
together upon the whole main structure of that colos- 
sal campaign which during the following thirteen 
months smote into annihilation all that remained of 
the military power of the rebellion. 

Sherman at once set to work to accumulate stores 
sufficient for a campaign, and his own statements of 
his motives and views in so doing, are so comically like 
his doctrines about his "pleb" when a cadet at West 



440 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

Point, that we quote a couple of passages. Having 
put a stop to the government issues of rations to the 
poor of East Tennessee, he says : 

"At first my orders operated very hardly, but 
* no actual suffering resulted, and I trust that 
those who clamored at the cruelty and hardships of the 
day have already seen in the result a perfect justifica- 
tion of my course." 

Seeing it himself, it is moreover clear that if they 
did not, it would not particularly distress him. In stat- 
ing how he proposed to live if he marched into Geor- 
gia, he is as independently and rigidly just : 

" Georgia has a million of inhabitants. If they can 
live, we should not starve. If the enemy interrupt 
my communications, I will be absolved from all obli- 
gations to subsist on my own resources, but feel per- 
fectly justified in taking whatever and wherever I can 
find. I will inspire my command, if successful, with 
my feelings, and that beef and salt are all that are ab- 
solutely necessary to life, and parched corn fed Gen- 
eral Jackson's army once, on that very ground." 

All things being ready, Sherman moved from Chat- 
tanooga on May 6th, 1864, and by a series of labo- 
rious marches, skillful -manoeuvres and well fought bat- 
tles, flanked or drove Johnston backwards from one 
strong post to another, until on the 17th of July, Jef- 
ferson Davis greatly simplified and shortened Sherman's 
problem by putting the rash and incompetent Hood in 
the place of the skillful and persevering soldier who had 
with less than half Sherman's force, by using the nat- 
ural advantages of the country, made him take seventy- 
two days to advance a hundred miles, and at the end 



PREPARES TO MOVE FROM ATLANTA. 441 

of that time actually had more troops than at first, 
while Sherman had many less. In fact, Johnston was 
on the very point of making a dangerous attack on 
Sherman at the right point, when Hood took com- 
mand, at once attacked on the wrong one, and was de- 
feated. Still advancing, Sherman manoeuvred Hood 
out of Atlanta ; saw that mad bull of a general set off 
some months later, head down and eyes shut, on his 
way to dash himself against the steady strength of 
Thomas at Nashville ; and turning back to Atlanta, he 
prepared for his Great March to the Sea. 

He had already cleaned Atlanta clean of rebels ; ex- 
porting all of them within their own military lines, 
and meeting their own and also Hood's appeals, re- 
spectively piteous and enraged, with sarcastic answers 
in his own inimitable style of cold sharp just reason- 
ing. He made the city nothing but a place of arms ; 
and having almost exactly the force of all arms that 
he had required for his purpose — for his Cassandra 
days were over, and his country was by this time glad 
and prompt to believe him and give him the tools he 
needed to do its work with — he issued his orders of 
march on November 9th ; sent his last dispatch from 
the interior to Washington, on the 11th ; his army 
was cut free from its former communications next day ; 
on the 14th it was concentrated at Atlanta ; next day 
two hundred acres of buildings, including all but the 
private dwellings of the city were burned or blown 
up ; a Massachusetts brigade, its band playing the 
wonderful " John Brown " folk-song, was the last to 
leave the city ; and with all the railroads effectuall y 
ruined behind it, and a parting message to General 



442 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

Thomas that "All is well," all organized, provisioned, 
and stripped down to the very last limit of impedi- 
ments, " the Lost Army " and its great leader set their 
faces southward and disappeared from the sight of 
their loyal countrymen for four weeks. 

We cannot here repeat the well known and roman- 
tic story of that Great March. With scarcely any se- 
rious opposition, Sherman, an unsurpassed master 
in the art of moving great armies, deluded what 
few opponents there were, with feints and march- 
es on this side and on that, or brushed them away if 
they stood, and pierced straight through the very 
heart of the rebellion to Savannah; stormed Fort 
McAllister, opened communication with the fleet, drove 
Hardee out of Savannah, and presented the city and 
25,000 bales of cotton, a " Christmas present " to Pres- 
ident Lincoln ; then turning northward, resumed his 
deadly way along the vitals of the confederacy, doing 
exactly what he had foretold in his letter to Grant ; 
and sure enough, they did between them, " make short 
work of Charleston and Richmond and the impov- 
erished coast of the Atlantic." The surrender of Lee 
was quickly followed by that of Johnston, and except 
for the small force which for a short time remained in 
arms beyond the Mississippi, the rebellion was ended. 

We cannot even give specimen extracts of the many 
strongly and clearly worded papers written by Gen- 
eral Sherman during his military career, as general 
orders, directions for the government of captured 
places or property, or discussions of points of mili- 
tary or civil law. But we must transcribe the noblest 
compliment which the great soldier ever received ; the 



HIS FORSIGHT IX WAR. 443 

testimony of the colored clergyman, Rev. Garrison 
Frazier, at Savannah, during the conferences there for 
organizing the freedmen, to the merits of General 
Sherman towards the race. Mr. Frazier said : 

" We looked upon General Sherman prior to his ar- 
rival as a man in the providence of God specially set 
apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously 
feel inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him 
as a man that should be honored for the faithful per- 
formance of his duty. Some of us called on him im- 
mediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he ivould 
not meet the Secretary ivith more courtesy than he met 
us. His conduct and deportment towards us charac- 
terized him as a friend and a gentleman. We have 
confidence in General Sherman, and think whatever 
concerns us could not be under better management." 

Of Sherman's characteristics as a general, we shall 
also give one single trait illustrating the most wonder- 
ful of them all — his almost divining foresight. We 
have more than once showed how he foresaw only too 
much for his own comfort ; but in the present instance 
he kept the matter to himself. It was, a preparation 
when the war broke out for that very march which he 
foretold in his letter to Grant and afterwards made. 
This preparation consisted in his obtaining from the 
Census Bureau at Washington a map of the " Cotton 
States," with a table giving the latest census returns 
of the cattle, horses and other products of each coun- 
ty in them. On the basis of this he studied the South 
for three years; and when the time for the march 
came, he knew substantially the whole resources of 
the country he was to pass through. 



444 WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

General Sherman's negotiations with Johnston, their 
disapproval by Government, and his quarrel in conse- 
quence with General Halleck and Secretary Stanton 
were unfortunate ; but it would be utterly absurd to 
admit for a moment that his motives in what he did 
were other than the very best ; and his own explana- 
tion of the affair shows that he was following out a 
policy which would have been in full harmony with 
President Lincoln's own feelings, as communicated to 
Sherman on the subject. 

Perhaps General Sherman may some day be selected 
for some high civil office. He is a man perhaps only 
of too lofty character and too brilliant genius to be 
harnessed into political traces. He was once nomi- 
nated for something or other at San Francisco, but 
when the " committee " came to tell him, he answered 
sarcastically, " Gentlemen, I am not eligible ; I am not 
properly educated to hold office ! " Col. Bowman ob- 
serves, "This nomination was the commencement of 
his political career, and his reply was the end of it." 
It is true in too many cases that a true soldier, like a 
good citizen, will find his very virtues the insurmount- 
able obstacles to political success. This is perhaps like- 
ly to remain the case unless the rule shall come into 
vogue that nobody shall have an office who lets it be 
known that he wants it. 




*5iH^ 



CHAPTER XV. 

OLIVEE 0. HOWARD. 

Can there be a Christian Soldier ? — General Howard's Birth — His Military Edu- 
cation — His Life Before the Rebellion — Resigns in Order to get into the Field 
— Made Brigadier for Good Conduct at Bull Run — Commands the Eleventh 
Corps and Joins the Army at Chattanooga — His Services in the Army of the 
Potomac — Extreme Calmness on the Field of Battle — Services with Sherman 
— Sherman's high Opinion of him — Col. Bowman's Admiration of Howard's 
Christian Observances — Patriotic Services while Invalided at Home — Reproves 
the Swearing Teamster — Placed over the Freedmen's Bureau — The Central 
Historic Fact of the War — The Rise of Societies to Help the Freedmen — The 
Work of the Freedmen's Bureau — Disadvantages Encountered by it, and by 
General Howard — Results of the Bureau thus far — Col. Bowman's Description 
of Gen. Howard's Duties — Gen. Sherman's Letter to Gen. Howard on Assum- 
ing the Post — Estimate of Gen. Howard's Abilities. 

The spirit of Christ is all love; it seeks only to 
enhance the highest good of existence, and to give to 
every being its utmost of happiness. The spirit of 
war is all wrath. It seeks to destroy by violence, and 
as fast as possible, whatever and whoever may oppose 
it. These two principles would seem so diametrically 
opposed to each other, that no man could be at once 
a Christian and a soldier, any more than he could ride 
at once on two horses going in opposite directions, or 
turn his back on himself, and at once go forward and 
backward. Indeed, the cases where the two profes- 
sions have been united are rare, and may probably 
depend upon some uncommon conjunction of gifts. 
But there certainly have been such. Colonel Gardiner 
was one. General Havelock was another ; and Gene- 

447 



448 OLIVER 0. HOWARD. 

ral Howard, who has been surnamed the Havelock of 
America, is another. 

Oliver Otis Howard was born in Leeds, Maine, Nov. 
8th, 1830. His father was a thrifty and independent 
farmer. The boy lived at home until he was ten, 
when his father dying, an uncle, Hon. John Otis, of 
Hallowell, took charge of him. He now attended 
school, went through Bowdoin College, and then en- 
tered the West Point Academy, graduating there in 
1854, fourth in general standing of his class. Begin- 
ning, as usual, as brevet second lieutenant, he was 
assigned to the ordnance department; and in 1856 
was chief ordnance officer in Florida, during a cam- 
paign against the Indians there. He worked steadily 
on in his profession, and at the beginning of the war 
was assistant professor of mathematics at West Point, 
and being desirous to accept the command of a vol- 
unteer regiment from his own State, asked leave 
from the War Department to do so, and was refused. 
On this he resigned his commission, and the Governor 
of Maine, in the end of May, 1861, appointed him 
colonel of the Third Maine Volunteers, which was the 
first three years 1 regiment from that State. 

At Bull Run, he commanded a brigade, being sen- 
ior colonel on the field, and for good conduct there, 
was in the following September commissioned briga- 
dier-general of volunteers. In December he was 
placed in General Sumner's command ; and he remain- 
ed in the Army of the Potomac until the latter part 
of September, 1863, when, having risen to the com- 
mand of the Eleventh Army Corps, that and Slocum's 



CALMNESS ON THE BATTLE-FIELD. 449 

corps, both under Hooker, were sent to reinforce the 
army at Chattanooga. 

During this time General Howard was present in all 
the chief battles of the Army of the Potomac. At 
Fair Oaks, on the Peninsula, he was twice wounded 
in the right arm, and had to have his arm amputated ; 
but he got back in season for the next battle — that of 
the second Bull Run. At Antietam, at Fredericksburg:, 
at Chancellorsville, he was present and fought his com- 
mand to the uttermost. At Gettysburg, Howard's 
troops held the key of the position, the cemetery ; and 
a soldier who was in the field with him in that tre- 
mendous fight, in speaking of his extreme calmness 
and coolness under fire, said, " General Howard stood 
there as if nothing at all was the matter. He never 
takes stimulants, either. Most of the officers do, but 
he never does. He was so calm because he was a 
Christian." Colonel Bowman, in speaking of this 
same trait in General Howard, testifies to the same 
point; observing that he is "careless of exposing his 
person in battle, to an extent that would be attributa- 
ble to rashness or fatalism if it were not known to 
spring from religion." 

During his campaigns with Sherman he was a most 
trustworthy and serviceable commander; singularly 
cool and fearless in battle, and most prompt and thor- 
ough in the* performance of whatever duty was im- 
posed upon him. After accompanying Sherman in 
his march for the relief of Burnside, General Howard 
served in the Atlanta campaign in command of the 
Fourth Army Corps ; after the death of General Mc- 

Pherson, he succeeded him in the important command 
28 



450 OLIVER O. HOWARD. 

of the Army of the Tennessee; and in Sherman's 
Great March, he was placed in command of the right 
wing, one of the two into which Sherman's force was 
divided, and in this position served until the end of 
the war. 

General Sherman quickly liked his trusty and help- 
ful subordinate, and has repeatedly paid high compli- 
ments to his soldierly and moral excellence. At the 
end of the Chattanooga campaign, for instance, in re- 
porting to Gen. Grant, he said, "In General Howard 
throughout I found a polished and Christian gentle- 
man, exhibiting the highest and most chivalrous traits 
of the soldier." Colonel Bowman speaks of General 
Howard's practice of Christian observances in the 
army with a curious sort of admiration which suffi- 
ciently shows how uncommon it was, at least among 
officers of high grade. He says : 

"General Howard, it is well known, has been pious 
and exemplary from his boyhood, was ever faithful 
and devoted in the discharge of his religious duties, 
and this even while a student at West Point. He car- 
ried his religious principles with him into the army, 
and was guided and governed by them in all his rela- 
tions with his officers and men. No matter who was 
permitted to share his mess or partake of his repast, 
whether the lowest subaltern of his command or Gen- 
eral Sherman himself, no one thought to partake, if 
General Howard were present, without first the invo- 
cation of the Divine blessing, himself usually leading, 
like the father of a family. General Sherman seems 
greatly to have admired the Christian character of 
General Howard, * * * and not only as a Chris- 



REPROVES THE SWEARING TEAMSTER. 451 

tian but as a soldier, preferring him and promoting 
him to the command of one of his armies." President 
Lincoln also valued him very highly, and was his im- 
movable friend. 

General Howard's unconditional devotion to duty 
was very strongly shown in the use he made of his 
time while disabled from military duty just after the 
loss of his arm. One of his companions in the service 
has described how — 

"Weak and fainting from hemorrhage and the se- 
vere shock his system had sustained, the next day 
he started for his home in Maine. He remained there 
only two months, during which time he was not idle. 
Visiting various localities in his native State, he made 
patriotic appeals to the people to come forward and 
sustain the government. Pale, emaciated, and with 
one sleeve tenantless, he stood up before them, the 
embodiment of all that is good and true and noble in 
manhood. He talked to them as only one truly loyal 
can talk — as one largely endowed with that patriotism 
which is a heritage of New England blood. Modesty, 
sincerity, and earnestness characterized his addresses, 
and his fervent appeals drew hundreds of recruits 
around the national standard." 

Howard's reply to the swearing teamster was a good 
instance of kind but decided reproof, of just the sort 
that will do good if any will. The story is this : 

"On one occasion, a wagon-master, whose teams 
were floundering through the bottomless mud of a 
Georgia swamp, became exasperated at the unavoida- 
ble delay, and indulged in such a torrent of profanity 
as can only be heard in the army or men of his class. 



452 OLIVER O. HOWARD. 

General Howard quietly approached, unperceived by 
the offender, and was an unwilling listener to the blas- 
phemous words. The wagon-master, on turning 
around, saw his general in close proximity, and made 
haste to apologize for his profane outburst, by saying, 
'Excuse me, General, I did not know you were here.' 
The General, looking a reprimand, replied, 'I would 
prefer that you abstain from swearing from a higher 
and better motive than because of my presence.' " 

In May, 1865, General Howard was placed at the 
head of the Freedmen's Bureau ; a position for which 
he was probably the very best man in the United 
States, one whose extremely noble and benevolent 
purpose was wholly in harmony with the loftiest traits 
of his own character, and whose peculiar difficulties 
were such as he was exactly the man to encounter, by 
nature, education and official position. 

By imagining one's self to have passed forward in 
history for a century or two centuries, and to be taking 
such a backward perspective view of the southern 
rebellion as such an advance would give, any mind of 
historic qualities will perceive more clearly than in 
any other way the falling off and disappearance of the 
minor circumstances of the great struggle, and the 
few great features that remain — the central facts, the 
real meanings of the war. Of all these, that which 
will remain most important is, the escape from their 
modern Egypt of the nation of the slaves. Lives and 
deeds of individual men will grow obscure. The gi- 
gantic battles, the terrific novelties, the vast campaign- 
ing combinations of the successive chapters of the war 
will lose their present strong colors. Even the fact that 



CENTRAL HISTORIC FACT OF THE WAR. 453 

part of the white population of the United States sought 
in vain to sever their political union with the rest, will 
lose its present foremost place in the story ; for it will 
have assumed the character of an abortive delusion ; a 
temporary struggle, whose pretended reasons were so- 
phistical and false, whose real ones were kept out of sight 
as much as possible, and which ended in the speedy 
re-establishment of the power attacked. But the 
emancipation of the slaves is an eternal epoch; it 
marks the point where the race of one vast continent, 
after centuries of exile into another continent and of 
the most degrading subjection to another race, is all 
at once let out into civilization ; brought forth from 
the pens of beasts, to take a place among the sons of 
men. Yet more ; they are admitted to take a place 
among the sons of God ; for American slavery, as if 
with the devil's own cunning and cruel power, did 
really not only exclude the slave' from becoming a cit- 
izen, but it actually excluded him from the power of 
becoming a Christian. The emancipation of the slaves 
was even more than the organization of a new nation ; 
for it was the birth into humanity of a new race. 

This view of the case is naturally even now not ac- 
cepted by large numbers of persons. It was a matter 
of course that still larger numbers should fail to under- 
stand it in the day of it. President Lincoln himself 
apparently felt more hope than expectation upon the 
subject ; and all know how long he delayed, how un- 
endurably slow he seemed to far-sighted lovers of hu- 
manity, before he issued his great proclamation. But 
there are a few men, who possess at once a powerful 
instinct of benevolence and an intuitive comprehen- 



454 OLIVER 0. HOWARD. 

sion of the present and the future — qualities which 
naturally go together, because they are alike pure, lofty, 
dependent upon peculiarly noble organizations. As 
soon as the progress of the war rendered any consid- 
erable number of freedmen accessible for any perma- 
nently useful purpose, societies began at once to be or- 
ganized in the North to help the freedman towards his 
rightful standing of an intelligent Christian citizenship. 
The first of them were organized in Boston, New York, 
and Philadelphia, in consequence of the information 
given by General Sherman, Commodore Dupont, and 
the able Treasury Agent, Mr. E. L. Pierce, of the sit- 
uation of the freedmen on the Sea Islands of Georgia 
and South Carolina. Several societies or " commis- 
sions " were established, all of which — except some 
ecclesiastical ones — are now operating in conjunction 
as " The American Freedmen's Union Commission." 
The "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned 
Lands," commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau, was 
created by an act of Congress passed in March, 1865, 
and in form received the freedmen into the express 
protection and care of the Government ; and its crea- 
tion was to a considerable extent if not altogether the 
result of the efforts of the energetic men who had es- 
tablished the various private commissions. It is pos- 
sible that the Bureau might have been earlier estab- 
lished, had the right man been found to take charge 
of it. When General Howard was thought of, at the 
conclusion of the war, it was felt that he was in every 
respect most suitable. His lofty views of duty ; his 
habits of orderly obedience and orderly command ; 
the facilities of his high military position for dealing 



WORK OF THE FREEDMEN's BUREAU. 455 

•with the body of assistants it was contemplated ' to 
secure from the army ; and above all, his calm, steady, 
kindly ways, and his rare characteristic and complete 
sympathy with the missionary object of securing a real 
Christian citizenship for the unfortunate colored race, 
were just the qualities that must have been put to- 
gether if a man was to have been constructed on pur- 
pose for the place. 

General Howard has been most earnestly at work in 
this position ever since, amid great difficulties and ob- 
structions, but with unfailing faith and industry ; and 
although it is easy to see how far more of his great 
task would have been at this day accomplished had the 
white people of the South, and the Government itself 
helped the Bureau earnestly and in good faith, yet 
very great good has already been done. 

Doubtless the freed people have in many things been 
faulty. It would be strange indeed if a whole race 
could in the twinkling of an eye, put off the bad hab- 
its burned and ingrained into the very texture of their 
bodies and minds, by a heavy tyranny of two centu- 
ries and a half. Generations of freedom must pass be- 
fore the evils can wholly disappear that generations of 
slavery have systematically and powerfully cultivated. 
But already, to a very great degree (to use the words 
of a recent comprehensive summary of the history of 
the Bureau,) "labor has been reorganized, justice has 
been secured, systems of education * * * have 
been established, the transition period from slavery to 
liberty has been safely passed, and the freed people 
have emerged from their state of bondage into that of 
the liberty of American citizenship." 



456 OLIVER 0. HOWARD. 

The operations of the Bureau and of the Commis- 
sion which works in union with it, as a sort of unoffi- 
cial counterpart — a draught-horse hitched on outside 
the thills — have sought four objects for the freed- 
men, in the following order : 1. To provide for their 
temporal wants ; for if they had no food for to-day, 
and no clothes nor roofs to shelter them, they would 
be out of the world before they could learn their 
letters, earn a dollar, or learn to obey the law ; 2. 
To promote justice ; 3. To reorganize labor ; 4. To 
provide education. 

In his difficult and laborious position, General How- 
ard has had to act without the help of any public funds, 
by using temporarily certain species of abandoned 
property, and by means of details of officers and men 
from the army, who' have done their work in the 
Bureau as part of their military duty, and without 
other than their usual pay. The good accomplished 
has been rather by the use of influence, by forbear- 
ance, by the exercise of the minimum of absolute au- 
thority. But in spite of the good intentions of Con- 
gress, the help of the Government of the United States, 
which, so far as its action upon the Freedmen'sBureau is 
concerned, is exclusively the executive, has not in any 
complete sense been given either to the freedmen them- 
selves, in their toilsome upward road, nor to those who 
have been striving to aid them in the ascent ; but it , 
has rather been felt as a cold, sullen and grudging 
sufferance, verging even into a pretty distinct mani- 
festation of an enmity like that of the worse class of 
unfriendly southern whites, and showing more than 



RESULTS OF THE BUREAU. 457 

one token of an intention to destroy the Bureau and 
leave the freedmen helpless as soon as possible. 

General Howard has done all that could be done, 
against these obstacles. It is easy to see what constant 
exercise he must need, of the Christian virtues of for- 
bearance, patience, kindness, and the overcoming of 
evil with good, as well as of the moral qualities of 
honor and justice, and the soldierly attainments of or- 
der, promptitude and industry. With some of these 
he must meet the angry tricks of white enemies ; with 
some, the pitiful faults — which are misfortunes rather — 
faults of the freedmen themselves — idleness, falsehood, 
dishonesty, disorder, incapacity, fickleness ; with others 
still, the inactive resistance of his superiors, and the 
cumbrous machinery of an organization which the na- 
ture of the case prevents from coming into good work- 
ing shape. 

In spite of all obstacles, the Missionary General and 
his Bureau and the Commission have done much. Up 
to the first day of 1867, fourteen hundred schools had 
been established, with sixteen hundred and fifty-eight 
teachers and over ninety thousand pupils ; besides 782 
Sabbath Schools with over 70,000 pupils ; and the 
freedmen were then paying towards the support of 
these schools, out of their own scanty earnings, after 
the rate of more than eleven thousand dollars a month. 
Within one year, they had accumulated in their sav- 
ings bank, $616,802.54. Many of them have bought 
and possess homesteads of their own. Their univer- 
sal obedience to law would be remarkable in any com- 
munity in the world, and under such treatment as they 
have experienced from their former masters since the 



458 OLIVER O. HOWARD. 

war, would have been simply impossible for the body 
of freemen in the most law-abiding of the Northern 
States. And above all, they are with one accord most 
zealous, most diligent and most successful, in laboring 
to obtain the religious and intellectual culture which 
alone can fit them for their new position, as self-gov- 
erning citizens of a free country. 

The views of intelligent army officers, of the task 
which General Howard undertook in accepting this 
post and of his fitness for it, are not without interest. 
Col. Bowman thus describes the work : 

" He was placed at the head of a species of Poor 
Law Board, with vague powers to define justice and 
execute loving kindness between four millions of 
emancipated slaves and all the rest of mankind. He 
was to be not exactly a military commander, nor yet 
a judge of a Court of Chancery ; but a sort of com- 
bination of the religious missionary and school com- 
missioner, with power to feed and instruct, and this 
for an empire half as large as Europe. But few offi- 
cers of the army would have had the moral courage 
to accept such an appointment, and fewer still were as 
well fitted to fill it and discharge one-half its complica- 
ted and multifarious duties." 

When General Howard, on accepting his new post, 
advised his old commander by letter, General Sher- 
man, in a friendly reply, thus wrote : 

" I hardly know whether to congratulate you or not, 
but of one thing you may rest assured, that you pos- 
sess my entire confidence, and I cannot imagine that 
matters that may involve the future of four millions 
of souls could be put in more charitable and more 



GENERAL HOWARD'S ABILITIES. 459 

conscientious hands. So far as man can do, I believe 
you will, but I fear you have Hercules' task. God 
has limited the power of man, and though, in the kind- 
ness of your heart, you would alleviate all the ills of 
humanity, it is not in your power ; nor is it in your 
power to fulfill one-tenth part of the expectations of 
those who framed the bureau for the freedmen, refu- 
gees and abandoned estates.' It is simply impracticable. 
Yet you can and will do all the good one man may, and 
that is all you are called on as a man and a Christian to 
do ; and to that extent count on me as a friend and 
fellow-soldier for counsel and assistance." General 
Sherman more than once repeated to others similar 
testimonies of his faith in General Howard. 

General Howard has not the vast intellect and bril- 
liant genius of General Sherman, nor the massive 
strength and immense tenacious will of General Grant. 
But he has qualities which are even loftier ; name- 
ly, those which are the sure basis for such respect and 
confidence as General Sherman's; which alone .have 
enabled him to accomplish what he has in an enter- 
prise wholly discouraging on any merely human prin- 
ciples. Grant and Sherman, in what they have done, 
had at their backs a people far more intelligent, reso- 
lute and wealthy, than those against whom they warred ; 
but a man like Howard, whose soul opens upward and 
takes in the unselfish strength and love and faith of 
Almighty God, can do great things for humanity irre- 
spective of money and majorities. 




nPtijttuck 




CHAPTER XVI. 

WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM. 

The Buekinghams an Original Puritan Family — Eev. Thomas Buckingham — 
Gov. Buckingham's Father and Mother — Lebanon, the Birthplace of Five 
Governors — Gov. Buckingham's Education — He Teaches School — His Natural 
Executive Tendency — His Business Career — His Extreme Punctuality in Pav- 
ments — His Business and Religions Character — His Interest in the Churches 
and Schools— His Benefactions in those Directions — His Political Course — He 
Accepts Municipal but not Legislative Offices — A Member of the Peace Con- 
ference — He Himself Equips the First State Militia in the War — His Zealous 
Co-operation with the Government — Sends Gen. Aiken to Washington — The 
Isolation of that City from the North — Gov. Buckingham's Policy for the War; 
Letter to Mr. Lincoln — His Views on Emancipation ; Letter to Mr. Lincoln — 
Anecdote of the Temperance Governor's Staff. 

In writing the history of men of our time, we feel 
that we are only making a selection of a few from 
among many. We have given the character of one 
State Governor — we could give many more, but must 
confine ourselves to only two examples. William Al- 
fred Buckingham, for eight years Governor of Con- 
necticut, and under whose administration the State 
passed through the war, may be held a worthy repre- 
sentative of the wisdom, energy and patriotism of our 
state magistracy in the time of the great trials. 

Gov. Buckingham is of the strictest old Puritan 
stock. The first of the name in this country was 
Thomas Buckingham, one of the colony that planted 
New Haven, Conn., but who soon removed to Milford 
in that State, where he was one of the "Seven Pil- 



464 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

lars" of the church there, as originally organized. His 
son, Rev. Thos. Buckingham, was minister of Saybrook, 
one of the founders of Yale College, and one of the 
moderators of the Synod that framed the " Saybrook 
Platform." Through this branch of the family, this 
Governor of Connecticut is descended, his father hav- 
ing been born in Saybrook. 

William Alfred Buckingham, the son of Samuel and 
Joanna (Matson) Buckingham, was born in Lebanon, 
Conn., May 28, 1804. His father was a thrifty farmer, 
a deacon in the church, a man of remarkably sound 
judgment and common sense, and a public spirited 
man, abounding in hospitality. His mother was one 
of those women in whom the strong qualities of the 
Puritan stock come to a flowering and fruitage of a 
celestial quality, a rare union of strength and sound- 
ness. She had a mother's ambition for her children, 
but always directed to the very highest things. " What- 
ever else you are, I want you to be Christians," was 
one of her daily household sayings. Her memory is 
cherished in the records of many words and deeds of 
love and beneficence, written not with ink and pen, 
" but in fleshy tables of the heart," in all the region 
where she lived. 

The little town of Lebanon, like many others of the 
smaller New England towns, had a fine Academy, which 
enjoyed the culture of some of those strong and spicy 
old New England school masters, that were a genera- 
tion worthy of more praise and celebration than the 
world knows of. For that reason perhaps, this little 
town of Lebanon has given to the State of Connec- 
ticut five Governors, who have held that State office 



gov. Buckingham's youth. 465 

for 37 years out of the past one hundred — more than 
one-third of the century. 

Governor Buckingham's education Tfas a striking 
specimen of New England. It was based first on the 
soil, in the habits and associations of a large, thriving, 
well conducted farm. It was nourished up at those 
rural Academies, which are fountain memorials of 
the enthusiasm for education, of our Puritan fathers. 
He had a special taste for mathematics, which, united 
with the promptings of a vigorous and energetic phys- 
ical nature, and love of enterprise, led him to desire 
the profession of a practical surveyor, a profession 
which in those days had some state patronage, and 
was attractive to young men of that class of char- 
acter. At the age of eighteen, he taught dis- 
trict school, in Lyme, and gave such satisfaction 
that his services were earnestly sought for another 
year. He returned, however, to the practical labors 
of his father's farm, and for the last three years per- 
formed as much work as any of the laborers whom his 
father hired. His nature seemed to incline him rather 
to a dealing with the practical and physical forces of the 
world, and so he wisely forbore that classical career 
which would have occupied four years of his life in a 
college, and began the career of a man of business at 
once, entering a dry goods store in Norwich as clerk, 
at twenty. After two years spent there, and a short 
experience in a wholesale store in New York, he es- 
tablished himself in business as a dry goods merchant 
at Norwich, Conn. From this time his career has been 
a successful one in the business circles of the country. 
Enterprise, prudence, thrift, order and exact punctu- 



466 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

ality and spotless integrity have given him a name 
worth any amount of money. In 1830 he commenced 
the manufacture of ingrain carpeting, which he con- 
tinued for 18 years. In 1848 he closed up his dry 
goods business, discontinued the manufacturing of car- 
peting, and engaged in the fabrication of India Rub- 
ber, a business then in its infancy. 

From that time to the present, he has been the 
treasurer, and an active business director of the 
Hay ward Rubber Company, a company located in Col- 
chester, which has prosecuted an extensive and suc- 
cessful business. He is now a stockholder in eight or 
ten manufacturing companies, to the general manage- 
ment of quite a number of which he gives his atten- 
tion. 

An important feature in his character in these re- 
lations is his great business accuracy and punctuality. 
With an extended business running through a period 
of forty years, only two notes drawn, were protested 
for non-payment, and these cases occurred when he 
was wholly disabled from business by sickness. It 
was his custom always to remit money to meet notes 
due in New York, three days before their maturity. 
He has always regarded himself as under obligations 
to pay his debts at the time agreed upon, as much as 
to pay the amount due. 

His unvarying and unfailing accuracy in these re- 
spects, had given him a character which enabled him 
at any time to command the assistance of any bank 
with which he did business. His name was good 
for any amount of resources. This particular char- 
acteristic made his position as Governor of Connec- 



HIS BUSINESS AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 467 

ticut, in the sudden crisis of the war, of vital value to 
the country. 

No man could so soon command those material re- 
sources which are the sine qua non of war, and it is 
one of many good Providences that the state of Con- 
necticut at this crisis was so manned. Immediately 
on the news of the war, the banks of the state, and 
business men in all parts, sent immediate and prompt 
word to him that he might command their utmost 
resources. They were even anxious to have their 
capital at once made serviceable in the emergency, 
and they felt sure in doing so that they were putting 
their resources into the hands of a leader every way 
fitted to employ them to the best advantage. 

Governor Buckingham is well known as an exem- 
plary and laborious Christian, a devoted friend of edu- 
cation, a practical and consistent temperance man, 
and proverbially generous in his charities towards these, 
and every other good cause. And it has probably 
been due to this, as much as to his personal and official 
integrity, that he has been so popular with his friends, 
and claimed such respect from his political opponents. 
Indeed nothing could have been more respectful and 
generous, during all those excited political canvasses 
which belonged to his public life, than the treatment 
his private character received from those who were 
politically opposed to him. 

His own strict attention to the proprieties and 
courtesy's of life, his bland and urbane manners 
may go a long way towards accounting for this 
result. 

29 



468 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

In 1830 he united with the Second Congregational 
Church, under the care of Rev. Alfred Mitchell, and 
in 1838 made a report to the Ecclesiastical Society, to 
show the necessity of organizing a new church. Such 
a church was organized four years after, and is now 
known as the Broadway Congregational Church. From 
its organization to the present time, he has been 
one of its deacons, an active member, and a liberal 
supporter. He gave them a fine organ when their 
present church building was completed, and has lately 
erected a beautiful chapel for one of their Mission Sab- 
bath Schools. He has himself been a Sabbath School 
Teacher for the last thirty-seven years, except during 
the four years of the Rebellion. 

He was moderator of the National Congregational 
Council held in Boston, in 1865. 

As a friend of Education, he earnestly advocated the 
consolidation of the School Districts of Norwich, and 
a system of graded schools to be open to all, and sup- 
ported by a tax on property, and he was permitted to 
see such a system established with the most beneficial 
results. He was deeply interested in the effort to 
establish the Norwich Free Academy, gave his per- 
sonal efforts to obtain a fund for its endowment, and 
has contributed an amount to that fund second only 
to one subscriber. 

Having seen the extended and beneficial influence 
which Yale College has exerted and is exerting over 
the political and religious interest of the country, he 
has felt it a privilege and a duty to contribute largely 
to the pecuniary necessities of that institution. 

He has given a permanent fund to the Broadway 



HIS POLITICAL CAREER. 469 

Congregational Church in Norwich, and to the Con- 
gregational Church in Lebanon, with which his 
parents and sisters were connected, the income of 
which is to be used for the pastor's library. Joseph 
Otis, Esq., who founded a public library in Norwich, 
selected him for one of the trustees, and he is now 
President of the Board. 

As a politician, he was a Whig. In 1842 he was 
the candidate of that party for a seat in the lower 
house of the General Assembly, but was not elected. 
He was afterwards repeatedly nominated both for the 
House of Representatives and for the Senate, but de- 
clined such nominations, and was never a member of a 
legislative body. He has, however, frequently accept- 
ed municipal offices ; was often elected a member of 
the City Council, sometimes occupying the seat of an 
alderman, and was elected Mayor of the city of Nor- 
wich in 1849 and 1850, and again in the years 1856 
and 1857. When the Whig party was broken up, he 
placed himself with the Republicans, and in 1858 was 
elected Governor of the State, which position he occu- 
pied eight years, and four of them were the years of 
the Rebellion. 

The famous Peace Conference met at Washington 
one month before the inauguration of Lincoln, wherein 
were represented thirteen of the free States and 
seven of the slave States, for the purpose of con- 
sidering what could be done to pacify the excited 
feelings of the South, and preserve the existing 
Union. 

Governor Buckingham was not a member of the 



470 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

conference, but appointed the commissioners from 
Connecticut. He was in Washington during its ses- 
sion, and in daily intercourse with members of that 
body from all parts of the country, and understood 
their views of questions at issue. But from the very 
first he was of opinion that the state of things had 
reached a place where further compromise was an 
impossibility, or in the words of Lincoln, the Union 
must now become either in effect all for slavery or all 
for freedom in its general drift. So this peace con- 
ference broke up, effecting nothing. 

When the news of the fall of Sumter reached Con- 
necticut, attended by the Presidential call for troops, 
the State Legislature was not in session. Governor 
Buckingham, however, had such wide financial rela- 
tions as enabled him immediately to command the 
funds for equipping the militia for the field. 

From every quarter came to him immediate offers 
both of money and of personal services, from men of 
the very first standing in the State — and Connecticut, 
we think, may say with honest pride that no men 
went into the field better equipped, more thoroughly 
appointed and cared for. Governor Buckingham gave 
himself heart and soul to the work. During that per- 
ilous week when Washington stood partially isolated 
from the North, by the uprising of rebellion in Mary- 
land, Governor Buckingham, deeply sympathizing 
with the President, dispatched his son-in-law, Gen. 
Aiken, who with great enterprize and zeal found his 
way through the obstructed lines to Washington, car- 
rying the welcome news to the President that Connec- 
ticut was rising as one man, and that all her men and 



gen. aiken's trip to Washington. 471 

all her wealth to the very last would be at the dispo- 
sal of the country. 

The account of Gen. Aiken's trip to Washington 
with the dispatches for the government there, brings 
freshly to mind the intense excitement of those days, 
and it contains some very striking touches of descrip- 
tion of the state of things at Washington. Gen. Ai- 
ken left Norwich at 6 A. M., on Monday, April 2 2d, 
1861 ; on reaching Philadelphia that evening, found 
that city extremely stirred up, and all regular commu- 
nication with Washington suspended ; met a gentle- 
man who wished to reach Washington, and the two 
spent most of the night in searching for the means of 
proceeding. At four next morning they got permission 
to set out on a special train with a Pennsylvania regi- 
ment, and after a very slow, journey, in consequence 
of the danger of finding the track torn up, reached 
Perryville, on the Susquehanna, at ten. Gen. Butler 
had carried off the ferry-boats to Annapolis; and after 
delay and search, our two travellers hired a skiff and 
crossed to Havre de Grace, where they found, not 
only that the town was full of reports of railroads and 
telegraphs broken up in all directions, but that there 
were plenty of men watching to see how many 
"d — d Yankees," as they called them, were going to- 
wards Washington. Gen. Aiken and his friend, how- 
ever, after a time, chartered a covered wagon and 
rode to Baltimore, arriving about 9 1-2 P. M. The 
streets were brilliantly lighted, and full of people, 
some of them in uniform, and most of them wearing 
rebel badges; and even the few words which the 
travellers heard as they passed along the crowded 



472 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

halls of their hotel, apprized them that no man could 
avow Unionism there and preserve his life in safety 
for a moment. They accordingly went at once to 
their rooms and kept out of sight until morning, when 
the hotel proprietor, a personal friend of Gen. Aiken's 
companion, and also of the leading Baltimore rebels, 
procured them passes signed by Gen. Winder and 
countersigned by Marshal Kane. Having these, they 
paid $50 for a carriage which took them to Washing- 
ton. Reaching Washington at 10 P. M. on Wednes-. 
day, Gen. Aiken found its silence and emptiness a 
startling contrast to the hot-blooded crowd at Balti- 
more. He says: 

"Half a dozen people in the hall of the hotel 
crowded around to ask questions about the North. I 
then began to realize the isolation of the city." Hur- 
rying to Gen. Scott's head-quarters, the old chief was 
found with only two of his staff. "Upon reading the 
Governor's letter, he rose and said excitedly, ' Sir, 
you are the first man I have seen with a written dis- 
patch for three days. I have sent men out every day 
to bring intelligence of the northern troops. Not one 
of them has returned; where are the troops?' The 
number and rapidity of his questions, and his very 
excited manner, gave me a further realization of the 
critical nature of the situation." 

Calling on Secretary Cameron, Gen. Aiken was re- 
ceived very much in the same manner. A friend in 
one of the Departments " advised very strongly against 
a return by the same route, as my arrival was knoivn, 
and the general nature of my business suspected by 



gen. aiken's trip to Washington. 473 

rebel spies, with whom the city abounded, and in 
some quarters least suspected. 

"How the knowledge of my affairs could have 
been gained has always been a mystery, for I had re- 
alized since leaving Philadelphia, that my personal 
safety depended entirely upon secrecy and prudence. 

"At 10 A. M. I called on the President, and saw 
him for the first time in my life. It was an interview 
I can never forget. No office-seekers were about 'the 
presence' that day — there was no delay in getting an 
audience. Mr. Lincoln was alone, seated in his busi- 
ness room up stairs, looking toward Arlington Heights 
through a widely opened window. Against the case- 
ment stood a very long spy-glass, which he had obvi- 
ously just been using. I gave him all the information 
I could, from what I had seen and heard during my 
journey. 

"He seemed depressed beyond measure, as he ask- 
ed, slowly, and with great emphasis, 'What is the 
North about ? Do they know our condition ?' I said, 
'No, they certainly did not when I left.' This was 
true enough. 

"He spoke of the non-arrival of the troops under 
Gen. Butler, and of having had no intelligence from 
them for two or three days. * * * 

"I have referred to the separation of the city from 
the North. In no one of many ways was it brought 
home more practically to my mind than in this : The 
funds in my possession were in New York city bank 
notes. Their value in Washington had suddenly and 
totally departed. They were good for their weight in 
paper, and no more. During my interview with the 



474 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

President, my financial dilemma was referred to. I 
remarked that I had not a cent, although my pockets 
were full. He instantly perceived my meaning, and 
kindly put me in possession of such an amount of 
specie as I desired. * * * Having delivered my 
dispatch, and the Governor's words of encouragement, 
and enjoyed an interview protracted, by the Presi- 
dent's desire, beyond ordinary length, I left." 

The New York Seventh Regiment reached the city 
just as Gen. Aiken had walked from the President's 
house to the State Department; and when the flag 
announcing their arrival at the Baltimore station was 
hoisted, says Gen. Aiken, "such a stampede of hu- 
manity, loyal and rebel, as was witnessed that hour 
in the direction of the Baltimore Railway station, can 
only be imagined by those who, like myself, took part 
in it. One glance at the gray jackets of the Seventh 
put hope in the place of despondeaey in my breast." 

Gen. Aiken returned by taking a private convey- 
ance, and obscure roads, until, north of the Pennsylva- 
nia line, he reached a railroad, and at Hanover, the 
first telegraph station, reported progress to Governor 
Buckingham, having been unable to communicate 
with him during four days, and not having seen the 
United States flag once during the whole trip from 
Philadelphia around to the Pennsylvania line, except 
on the Capitol at Washington. Gen. Aiken, in con- 
cluding his account, says, undoubtedly with correct- 
ness, "There has been no hour since that when 
messages of sympathy, encouragement and aid 
from the loyal Governor of a loyal State were more 



HIS POLICY FOE THE WAR. 475 

truly needed or more effective upon the mind of our 
late President, than those I had the honor to deliver." 
The views of Governor Buckingham as to the policy 
to be pursued with the rebellion may best be learned 
from the following letter, which he addressed to the 
President, dated June 25th, 1861 : 

"Sir — The condition of our government is so crit- 
ical that the people of this State are looking with 
deep interest to measures which you may recommend 
to Congress, and to the course which that body may 
pursue when it shall convene on the 4th day of July 
next. 

u You will not therefore think me presuming if I 
present for your consideration the views entertained 
by a large majority of our citizens, especially when I 
assure you that if they are not approved by your 
judgment, I shall regard it as evidence that their 
importance is over-estimated. 

11 There are to-day probably more than three hundred 
thousand men organized, armed and in rebellion 
against the general government. Millions of other 
citizens, who have been protected by its power, now 
deny its authority, and refuse obedience to its laws. 
Multitudes of others, who prize the blessings which 
they have received under its policy, are so overawed 
by the manifestations of passionate violence which 
surround them, that their personal security is found in 
suppressing their opinions, and floating with the cur- 
rent into the abyss of anarchy. The person and 
property and liberty of every citizen are in peril. This 
is no ordinary rebellion. It is a mob on a gigantic 



476 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

i 

scale, and should be met and suppressed by a power 
corresponding with its magnitude. 

"The obligations of the government to the loyal, 
the principles of equity and justice, the claims of hu- 
manity, civilization and religion, unite in demanding a 
force sufficient to drive the rebels from every rendez- 
vous, to influence them to return to their homes and 
their lawful employments, to seize their leaders and 
bring them before the proper tribunals for trial, and 
to inflict upon them the punishment justly due for 
their crimes. In your message to Congress I trust 
you will ask for authority to organize and arm a force 
of four or five hundred thousand men, for the purpose 
of quelling the rebellion, and for an appropriation 
from the public treasury sufficient for their support. 
Let legislation upon every other subject be regarded 
as out of time and place, and the one great object 
of suppressing the rebellion be pursued by the 
administration with vigor and firmness, without taking 
counsel of our fears, and without listening to any 
proposition or suggestion which may emanate from 
rebels or their representatives, until the authority of 
the government shall be respected, its laws enforced, 
and its supremacy acknowledged in every section of 
our country. 



"To secure such high public interests, the State of 
Connecticut will bind her destinies more closely to 
those of the general government, and in adopting the 
measures suggested she will renewedly pledge all her 



HIS VIEWS ON EMANCIPATION. 477 

pecuniary and physical resources, and all her moral 
power. 

"I am, dear sir, yours, 

with high consideration, 
(signed,) WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 
" To Abraham Lincoln, 

President of the United States." 

This gallant and -spirited letter shows conclusively 
that if the first one or two years of the war trailed 
on in irresolution and defeat, it was not for want of 
decided spirit in Connecticut and her governor. 

Still later in the war, we find Governor Buckingham 
addressing the following to President Lincoln, in view 
of his projected Emancipation Policy: 

"State of Connecticut, Executive Department, 
Hartford, Sept 26, 1862. 

"Dear Sir : — While my views of your Proclama- 
tions issued on the 22d and 24th instants, may be of 
little or no importance, yet you will permit me to con- 
gratulate you and the country that you have so clearly 
presented the policy which you will hereafter pursue 
in suppressing the rebellion, and to assure you that it 
meets my cordial approval, and shall have my uncon- 
ditional support. 

"Not that I think your declaration of freedom will 
of itself bring liberty to the slave, or restore peace to 
the nation ; but I rejoice that your administration will 
not be prevented by the clamors of men in sympathy 
with rebels, from using such measures as you indicate 
to overpower the rebellion, even if it interferes with 
and overthrows their much loved system of slavery. 



478 WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 

"Have we not too long deluded ourselves with the 
idea that mild and conciliatory measures would influ- 
ence them to return to their allegiance ? They have 
appealed to the arbitrament of the sword ; why should 
we hesitate to use the sword, and press the cause to a 
decision ? Have we not undervalued their resources, 
disbelieved in their deep hatred of our government 
and its free institutions ; and, influenced by erroneous 
ideas of the principles of humanity and mercy, crimi- 
nally sent our brave sons down to the grave by thou- 
sands, without having given them the coveted honor 
of falling on the battle-field, or without having chang- 
ed in the least the purpose of our enemies. 

"This little State has already sent into the army, 
and has now at the rendezvous more than one-half of 
her able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen 
and forty-five years, and has more to offer, if wanted, 
to contend in battle against the enemies of our gov- 
ernment. 

"I trust we shall press with increased energy and 
power every war measure, as the most economical, 
humane and Christian policy which can be adopted to 
save our national union, as well as to secure perma- 
nent peace to those who shall succeed us. 

"With sympathy for you in your responsible posi- 
tion, and renewed assurance of my cordial support, 
believe me, with high regard, 

your obedient servant, 

WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 
"To President Lincoln, 
Washington, D. C. 



WILLIAM A. BUCKINGHAM. 479 

After eight years of public service, five of which 
were made arduous by this war, into which, as may 
be seen by these letters, Governor Buckingham threw 
his whole heart and soul, and in which he bore equally 
with our good President, the burdens of the country, 
he retired at last to that more private sphere which 
he fills with so many forms of honorable usefulness. 

We have but one anecdote in closing, a noble trib- 
bute to the Governor's blameless example in his high 
station. 

The Connecticut Election Day, as it is called, or the 
day when the Legislature assembles, and the Governor 
is inaugurated, has always been held in the State as a 
grand gala day. During the war, especially, the mili- 
tary pomp and parade was often very imposing. The 
Governor's military staff consists of eight or ten mem- 
bers, and while the war lasted hard work and respon- 
sible duties fell to their lot. A friend of the Governor 
who had usually been with him on these occasions, 
remarked to one of his staff at the last of them : 

"I have often been with you on these occasions, 
and have never seen any liquor drank. I suppose," 
he added pleasantly, "you do that privately." 

" No, sir;" was the reply. "None of the Govern- 
or's staff ever use liquor." 

"Is that so?" was the surprised reply. 

"Yes," was the answer — "it is so." , 

Such an example as this, in so high a place, had a 
value that could not be too highly estimated. 



CHAPTER XVII. 
WENDELL PHILLIPS 

Birth and Ancestry of Wendell Phillips — His Education and Social Advantage 
— The Lovejoy Murder — Speech in Faneuil Hall — The Murder Justified — Mr. 
Phillips' First Speech — He Defends the Liberty of the Press — His Ideality — 
He Joins the Garrisonian Abolitionists' — Gives up the Law and Becomes a Re- 
former — His Method and Style of Oratory — Abolitionists' Blamed for the Bos- 
ton Mob — Heroism of the Early Abolitionists' — His Position in Favor of "Wom- 
an's Eights" — Anecdote of His Lecturing— His Services in the Cause of 
Temperance — Extract with His Argument on Prohibition — His Severity to- 
wards Human Nature — His Course During and Since the War — AChange of 
Tone Recommended. 

Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Mass., Nov. 
29, 1811. 

He is son of John Phillips, first Mayor of Boston. 
The Phillips family justly rank among the untitled ar- 
istocracy of Massachusetts. Liberal views, noble man- 
ners, love of learning and benevolent liberality have 
become in that state associated with the name. 

John Phillips, the grand uncle of Wendell Phillips, 
was the founder of Exeter Academy, in New Hamp- 
shire. Besides this he endowed a professorship in 
Dartmouth College, and contributed liberally to Prince- 
ton College, and gave $31,000 to Phillips Academy in 
Andover. 

His nephew Samuel Phillips, planned, founded and 
organized Phillips Academy in Andover. He was a 
member of the provincial Congress during the Revo- 
lutionary war — a member of the convention to form 

483 



484 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the United States Constitution in 1779, and a State 
Senator for twenty years following the adoption of 
the constitution, and for fifteen years was president in 
the Senate, and was from first to last the particular and 
trusted friend of Gen. Washington. If there be such 
a thing in America as a just and proper aristocracy it 
inheres in families in whom public virtues and services 
have been as eminent as in this case. 

Wendell Phillips was a graduate of Harvard Col- 
lege in 1831, and at the Cambridge law school in 1833, 
and was admitted to the Suffolk bar in 1834. 

A precise and elegant scholar, gifted with all possi- 
ble advantages of family, position, and prestige, 
Wendell Phillips began life with every advantage. 
But the very year after his admission to the bar, he 
was a witness of the mob in which Garrison was 
dragged disgracefully through Boston, for the crime 
of speaking his conscientious opinions. 

The spirit of his Puritan fathers was strong within 
him — and he was acting in accordance with all his 
family traditions when he at once espoused the cause 
of Liberty. 

His earliest public speech was made on an occasion 
befitting a son of old Massachusetts. 

On November 7, 1837, the Rev. E. P. Lovejoy, was 
shot by a mob at Alton, Illinois, while attempting to 
defend his printing press from destruction. When 
news of this event was received in Boston, Dr. Chan- 
ning headed a petition to the Mayor and Aldermen 
asking the use of Faneuil Hall for a public meeting. 
It will scarcely be credited by the present generation 
that a request so reasonable and so natural, headed by 



LOVE JOY MEETING IN FANEUIL HALL. 485 

a name so commanding as that of Dr. Channing, should 
have been flatly refused. The Major and Aldermen 
of Boston in those days trembled before the rod of 
southern masters, and however well disposed towards 
their own distinguished citizens, dared not encour- 
age them in the expression of any sentiments which 
might possibly be disagreeable to the South. It 
is true that this was the third printing press which 
Lovejoy had attempted to defend. It is true that he 
had a perfect legal right in his own state of Illinois to 
print whatever he chose. It is true also that the riot- 
ers who came from Missouri and attacked his house 
and shot him, were the vilest and profanest scum of 
society which a slave state can breed ; but for all that, the 
State of Massachusetts at that time could scarcely find 
a place or a voice to express indignation at the out- 
rage. Dr. Channing, undismayed by the first rebuff, 
addressed an impressive letter to his fellow citizens 
which resulted in a meeting of influential gentlemen 
at the old court room. Here measures were taken to 
secure a much larger number of names to the petition. 
This time the Mayor and Aldermen consented. 

The meeting was held on the 8th of December, and 
organized with the Hon. Jonathan Phillips for chair- 
man. Dr. Channing opened the meeting with an elo- 
quent address, and resolutions drawn up by him were 
read and offered. 

The attorney general of Massachusetts appeared now 

as the advocate of the rioters. He compared the slaves 

to a menagerie of wild beasts, and the Alton rioters 

to the orderly mob who threw the tea overboard in 

1773— talked of the "conflict of laws" between Mis- 
30 



486 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

souri and Illinois, declared that Lovejoy was presump- 
tuous and imprudent and died as the fool dieth. Then 
with direct and insulting reference to Dr. Channing, 
he asserted that a clergyman with a gun in his hand, or 
one mingling in the debates of a popular assembly, 
were equally out of place. This speech produced, as 
was natural, a sensation in Faneuil Hall, and Wendell 
Phillips who had come without expecting to speak, rose 
immediately to his feet and amid the boisterous efforts 
of the mobocratic party in the house to drown his voice 
made his first public speech. 

Mr. Phillip's style of oratory is peculiarly solemn and 
impressive. The spirit of whole generations of Pu- 
ritan ministers seems to give might to it. There is no 
attempt to propitiate prejudice — none to throw out 
popular allurements — it is calm, intense, and command- 
ing. 

"Sir," he said, in the course of this speech, "when I 
heard the gentleman lay down principles which place 
the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and 
Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those 
precious lips, (pointing to the portraits in the hall) 
would have broken into voices to rebuke the recreant 
American ; the slanderer of the dead. * * 
Sir, for the sentiments that he has uttered, on soil con- 
secrated by the prayers of the Puritans and the blood 
of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swal- 
lowed him up." 

A storm of mingled applause and hisses interrupted 
the bold young orator — with cries of "take that back — 
take that back." The uproar became so great for a 
time that he could not be heard. One or two gentle- 



MR. PHILLIPS' FIRST SPEECH. 487 

men came to Mr. Phillips' side while the crowd still 
continued to shout. " Make him take that back — he 
sha'nt go on till he takes that back." Mr. Phillips came 
forward to the edge of the platform, and looking on 
the excited multitude with that calm, firm, severe 
bearing- down glance which seems often to have such 
mesmeric effects, said solemnly : 

" Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. 
Surely the attorney general so long and well known 
here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so 
young as I am — my voice, never before heard in your 
walls." After this the young orator was heard to the 
end of his speech without interruption. In this first 
speech, which was wholly unpremeditated, he showed 
all that clearness, elegance of diction, logical compact- 
ness, and above all, that weight of moral conviction 
which characterized all his subsequent oratory. 

In allusion to the speech of the attorney general he 
said : " Imprudent ! to defend the liberty of the press! 
Why ? Because the defence was unsuccessful ! Does 
success gild crime into patriotism and the want of it 
change heroic self-devotion into imprudence? Was 
Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and 
threw away the scabbard ? Yet he, judged by that 
single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile the 
race he hated sat again upon the throne. 

"Imagine yourselves present when the first news of 
Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The 
tale would have run thus : ' The patriots are routed — 
the red coats victorious — Warren lies dead upon . the 
field.' With what scorn would that Tory have been re- 
ceived who should have charged Warren with impru- 



488 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

dence, who should have said that 'bred a physician, he 
was out of place, and died as the fool dieth.' How 
would the intimation have been received that Warren 
and his successors should have waited a better time ?' 
"Presumptuous! to assert the freedom of the press 
on American ground ! Is the assertion of such free- 
dom before the age ? So much before the age as to 
leave no one a right to make it because it displeases 
the community ? Who invented this libel on his coun- 
try ? It is this very thing which entitled Lovejoy to 
greater praise. The disputed right which provoked 
the revolution was far beneath that for which he died. 
(Here was a strong and general expression of disap- 
probation.) One word, gentlemen. As much as 
thought is, better than money, so much is the cause 
in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of 
taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the 
King did but touch his pocket Imagine if you can, 
his indignant eloquence if England had offered to put 
a gag on his lips. Mr. Chairman, from the bottom 
of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton 
for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had 
fled from city to city — suffering the destruction of 
three printing presses patiently. At length he took 
counsel with friends, men of character, of tried in- 
tegrity, of wide views of Christian principle. They 
thought the crisis had come — that it was full time 
to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a 
community like our own, of fixed habits and char- 
acter, but one in the gristle, not yet hardened in 
the bone of manhood. The people there, children 
of our older States, seem to have forgotten the blood- 



mr. Phillips' ideality. 489 

tried principles of their fathers, the moment they 
lost sight of New England hills. Something was 
to be done to show them the priceless value of free- 
dom of the press, to bring back and set right their 
wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers 
looked on a community, struggling like a drunken 
man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their 
feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be 
stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we 
cannot judge, the necessity of resistance. Insulted law 
called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the 
downward course, must be arrested. Does not the 
event show they judged rightly? Absorbed in a 
thousand trifles, how will the nation all at once come 
to a stand? Men begin as in 1776 and 1640 to dis- 
cuss principles and weigh characters, to find out where 
they are. Haply we may awake before we are borne 
over the precipice." 

From this time Wendell Phillips was identified with 
the radical abolitionists. 

His nature is characterized by an extreme ideal- 
ity. He is essentially in all things a purist. Had he 
not thus early in life been absorbed by the exigencies 
of a moral conflict, Mr. Phillips would have shown 
himself one of the most thorough and carefully culti- 
vated men of literature in our country. The demand 
for perfection is one of the most rigorous in his na- 
ture, and would have shown itself in an exacting pre- 
cision in style, orthography, rhetoric and pronuncia- 
tion. In regard to all these things his standard is that 
of an idealist. But the moral nature derived from his 
Puritan ancestry, was stronger than every other por- 



490 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

tion of him, and his ideality became concentrated 
upon the existing conflict in American society. His 
nature led him at once to take the most strenuous 
and rigorous ground side by side with William Lloyd 
Garrison. 

Tried by his severe standard, the constitution of the 
United States, by an incidental complicity with slav- 
ery, had become a sinful compact : a covenant with 
death and an agreement with hell — and with the un- 
questioning consistency which belonged to his Puritan 
blood, he did not hesitate to sacrifice to this belief his 
whole professional future. 

He abandoned his legal practice and took leave of 
the Suffolk bar, because he could not conscientiously 
take the oath to support the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States. What things were gain to him he counted 
loss. 

Henceforth there was no career open to him but 
that of the agitator and popular reformer. He 
brought to the despised and unfashionable cause not 
only the prestige of one of the most honored Massa- 
chusetts names, and the traditions of a family which was 
among orthodox circles as a Hebrew of the Hebrews, 
but the power of decidedly the first forensic orator 
that America has ever produced. His style was so 
dazzling, so brilliant, his oratory so captivating, that 
even the unpopularity of his sentiments could not pre- 
vent the multitudes from flocking to hear him. He 
had in a peculiar degree that mesmeric power of con- 
trol which distinguishes the true orator, by which he 
holds a multitude subject to his will, and carries them 
whither he pleases. 



HIS ORATORY. 491 

His speeches were generally extempore, and flowed 
on with a wonderful correctness, and perfect finish 
of language, without faltering, without the shadow 
of an inelegance — his sentences succeeding one anoth- 
er with a poised and rhythmical fullness, and his illus- 
trations happily running through the field of ancient 
and modern history, and with the greatest apparent 
ease selecting whatever he needed from thence for the 
illustration of his subject. In invective no American 
or English orator has ever surpassed him. At the bar of 
his fervid oratory he would arraign, try and condemn 
with a solemn and dignified earnestness that might al- 
most have persuaded the object of his attack of his 
own guilt. Warren Hastings is said to have judged 
himself to be the basest of men while he listened to 
the denunciations of Burke, and something of the 
same experience may have befallen those who were 
arraigned by Phillips. 

There was need enough at this time for a man thus 
endowed to come to the help of liberty in America, 
for the creeping influence of the despotic South, lull- 
ing, caressing, patronizing, promising, threatening and 
commanding, had gone very nigh to take away the 
right of free inquiry and free speech through the 
whole Northern States. 

The few noble women, who formed the original 
Boston Anti-Slavery Society, were a mark everywhere 
spoken against. Even after the stormy and scurrilous 
attack of the mob which drove them out from their 
meeting, and which almost took the life of Garrison, 
there was not a newspaper in Boston, except the Libera- 
tor, which did not, in giving an account of the matter, 



492 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

blame the abolitionists instead of the rioters. It was 
the old story that the lamb had troubled the wolf, and 
ought to be eaten up forthwith. The Advertiser spoke 
of the affair, "not so much as a riot, as the prevention 
of a riot," and "considered the whole matter as the 
triumph of law over lawless violence, and the love of 
order over riot and confusion." The Christian Regis- 
ter recommended to the ladies to imitate the early 
Christians of Trajan's day, and meet in secret, adding, 
with a sneer, "if the vanity of the ladies would allow." 

A leading orthodox divine shortly after preached a 
sermon to illustrate and defend the doctrine that no 
man has a right to promulgate any opinion distasteful 
to the majority of society where he lives. All, in 
short, seemed to be going one way — newspapers, pul- 
pits, bar and bench, and the gay world of fashion, 
were alike agreed that if discussing the condition and 
rights and wrongs of the slave, was disagreeable to 
southern people it ought to be put a stop to at once 
and everywhere, and that the Abolitionists were a 
pestilent sect, who turned the world upside down. 

In Wendell Phillips, at last, the scornful world met 
its match, for he was fully capable of meeting scorn 
with superior scorn, and retorting on contempt with 
contempt, and he stood as high above the fear of man 
that bringeth a snare, as any of the most unworldly 
of his Puritan grandfathers. 

The little band of Abolitionists that gathered around 
him and Garrison, men and women, were every one 
of them heroes. They were of the old revolutionary 
stock of Boston, and every way worthy of their lin- 
eage, and there was need enough it should be so, for 



THE EARLY ABOLITIONISTS. 493 

the struggle was no inconsiderable one — it was for life 
and death. Cast out of society, looked on as the off- 
scouring of the earth, hemmed in everywhere with 
slanders, often alienated from friends once the dearest 
and most admiring, laboring almost alone with an in- 
cessant and exhausting zeal, some of more delicate 
organization sunk under the trial, and may be said to 
have given their lives to the cause. 

Wendell Phillips speaks of them feelingly in one of 
his later speeches, delivered on the anniversary of the 
Boston Mob : 

"Many of those who met in this hall at that time 
are gone. They died as Whittier well says — 

' Their brave hearts breaking slow, 
But self-forgetful to the last, 
In words of cheer and bugle glow, 
Their breath upon the darkness past.' 

"In those days, as we gathered around their graves, 
and resolved that the narrower the circle became the 
closer we would draw together, we envied the dead 
their rest. Men ceased to slander them in that sanc- 
tuary ; and as we looked forward to the desolate vista 
of calamity and trial before us, and thought of the 
temptations which beset us on either side, from world- 
ly prosperity which a slight sacrifice of principle might 
secure, or social ease so close at hand, by only a little 
turning aside, we almost envied the dead the quiet 
sleep to which we left them — the harvest reaped, and 
the seal set beyond the power of change." 

The career of Phillips in those days was often amid 
threats of personal violence. Assassination, the favor- 
ite argument of slavery, was held up before him, and 



494 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

the recent death of Lovejoy showed that the threat 
was not an empty one. At home, his house, in turn 
with that of other leading abolitionists, was threatened 
with incendiary violence, notwithstanding it was the 
shelter of an invalid wife, whose frail life often seemed 
to hang on a thread. From that shaded and secluded 
invalid chamber, however, came no weak prayers or 
faltering purposes, for a braver, higher heart was never 
given to human being than the one that beat there. 
In the darkest and most dangerous hours, from that 
sick room came words of hope and cheer and inspira- 
tion, prompt ever to bid him go where the cause call- 
ed for him, and strengthening him by buoyant fear- 
lessness and high religious trust. Such women are a 
true inspiration to men. 

It is not wonderful that with such rare experience 
of how noble a being woman may be, and with such 
superior women for friends and associates, that Wen- 
dell Phillips should have formed a high ideal of wo- 
manhood, and become early one of the most enthusi- 
astic supporters of all reforms in which the interest of 
woman is concerned. 

On the 15th and 16th of October, 1857, he offered 
at a convention held in Worcester a series of resolu- 
tions in relation to the political rights of women which 
cover all the ground contended for by modern reform- 
ers. His speech on this subject is one of the most 
able and eloquent on record, and forms a part of the 
permanent literature of the movement. 

He speaks of womanhood with a solemn and religious 
earnestness, with the fervor of knightly times, and 
pleads against all customs and laws which bear hardly 



ANECDOTES OF LECTURING. 495 

upon her delicate organization, which mislead her from 
following her highest aspirations. 

An anecdote in circulation about him shows that he 
not only held such theories, but that he was helpful in 
practice. It is so in keeping with his general charac- 
ter as to be extremely probable. Notwithstanding 
the unpopularity of his abolition sentiments, Mr. Phil- 
lips' power as an orator was such that when lecturing 
on ordinary subjects he commanded the very highest 
prices in the literary market. On one of his tours he 
met in the cars a woman who was seeking a self-sup- 
porting career as a lecturer. Mr. Phillips inquired in- 
to her success, and found that independent of her ex- 
penses she made at the rate only of five dollars a 
time. He declared that such an inequality with his 
own success was an injustice, and added that he must 
beg her to allow him to equalize the account for once, 
by accepting the proceeds of his last lecture. 

Mr. Phillips had a way of making his fame and rep- 
utation gain him a hearing on the unpopular subject 
which he had most at heart. Committees from anx- 
ious lyceums used to wait on him for his terms, sure 
of being able to fill a house by his name. 

"What are your terms, Mr. Phillips?" 

" If I lecture on anti-slavery, nothing. If on any 
other subject one hundred dollars." 

The success of his celebrated lecture on the Lost Arts, 
which has been perhaps more than a thousand times 
repeated, is only a chance specimen of what he might 
have done in this department of lecturing, could he 
have allowed himself that use of his talent. 



496 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

Mr. Phillips is far from being a man of one idea. 
Energetic as was his abolition campaign, he has found 
time and strength to strike some of the heaviest and 
most victorious blows for temperance. • He has been 
a vigorous defender of the interests of the Maine Law, 
endangered in Massachusetts by the continual compli- 
ances of rank and fashion. His letter to Judge Shaw 
and President Walker is a specimen of unfearing and 
unflinching exposure and rebuke of those practices 
and concessions of public men, which cast contempt 
on the execution of law. His oration on Metropoli- 
tan Police has powerful arguments in favor of the pol- 
icy of legislative prevention of intemperance. 

We have selected his argument on the subject, both 
as a good example of his style and manner, and as a 
powerful presentation of a much needed argument. 

" Some men look upon this temperance cause as 
whining bigotry, narrow asceticism, or a vulgar senti- 
mentality, fit for little minds, weak women, and weaker 
men. On the contrary, I regard it as second only to 
one or two others of the primary reforms of this age, 
and for this reason. Every race has its peculiar temp- 
tation ; every clime has its specific sin. The tropics 
and tropical races are tempted to one form of sensu- 
ality ; the colder and temperate regions, and our Saxon 
blood, find their peculiar temptation in the stimulus 
of drink and food. In old times our heaven was a 
drunken revel. We relieve ourselves from the over- 
weariness of constant and exhaustive toil by intoxica- 
tion. Science has brought a cheap means of drunk- 
enness within the reach of every individual. National 
prosperity and free institutions have put into the hands 



PHILLIPS ON TEMPERANCE. 497 

of almost every workman the means of being drunk 
for a week on the labor of two or three hours. With 
that blood and that temptation, Ave have adopted dem- 
ocratic institutions, where the law has no sanction but 
the purpose and virtue of the masses. The statute- 
book rests not on bayonets, as in Europe, but on the 
hearts of the people. A drunken people can never be 
the basis of a free government. It is the corner-stone 
neither of virtue, prosperity, nor progress. To us, 
therefore, the title-deeds of whose estates and the safe- 
ty of whose lives depend upon the tranquillity of the 
streets, upon the virtue of the masses, the presence of 
any vice which brutalizes the average mass of mankind, 
and tends to make it more readily the tool of intrigu- 
ing and corrupt leaders, is necessarily a stab at the very 
life of the nation. Against such a vice is marshalled 
the Temperance Reformation. That my sketch is no 
mere fancy picture, every one of you knows. Every 
one of you can glance back over your own path, and 
count many and many a one among those who started 
from the goal at your side, with equal energy and per- 
haps greater promise, who has found a drunkard's grave 
long before this. The brightness of the bar, the orna- 
ment of the pulpit, the hope and blessing and stay of 
many a family, — you know, every one of you who has 
reached middle life, how often on your path you set 
up the warning, " Fallen before the temptations of the 
streets ! " Hardly one house in this city, whether it 
be full and warm with all the luxury of wealth, or 
whether it find hard, cold maintenance by the most 
earnest economy, no matter which, — hardly a house 
that does not count, among sons or nephews, some 



498 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

victim of this vice. The skeleton of this warning sits 
at every board. The whole world is kindred in this 
suffering. The country mother launches her boy with 
trembling upon the temptations of city life ; the father 
trusts his daughter anxiously to the young man she 
has chosen, knowing what a wreck intoxication may 
make of the house-tree they set up. Alas ! how often 
are their worst forebodings more than fulfilled! I 
have known a case — and probably many of you can 
recall some almost equal to it — where one worthy 
woman could count father, brother, husband, and son- 
in-law, all drunkards, — no man among her near kin- 
dred, except her son, who was not a victim of this vice. 
Like all other appetites, this finds resolution weak 
when set against the constant presence of temptation. 
This is the evil. How are the laws relating to it exe- 
cuted in this city ? Let me tell you. 

"First, there has been great discussion of this evil, — 
wide, earnest, patient discussion, for thirty-five years. 
The whole community has been stirred by the discus- 
sion of this question. Finally, after various experi- 
ments, the majority of the State decided that the meth- 
od to stay this evil was to stop the open sale of intox- 
icating drink. They left moral suasion still to address 
the individual, and set themselves as a community to 
close the doors of temptation. Every man acquainted 
with his own nature or with society knows that weak 
virtue, walking through our streets, and meeting at 
every tenth door (for that is the average) the tempta- 
tion to drink, must fall ; that one must be a moral 
Hercules to stand erect. To prevent the open sale of 
intoxicating liquor has been the method selected by 



PHILLIPS DURING AND SINCE THE WAR. 499 

the State to help its citizens to be virtuous ; in other 
words, the State has enacted what is called the Maine 
Liquor Law, — the plan of refusing all licenses to sell, 
to be drunk on the spot or elsewhere, and allowing 
only an official agent to sell for medicinal purposes and 
the arts. You may drink in your own parlors, you 
may make what indulgence you please your daily rule, 
the State does not touch you there ; there you injure 
only yourself, and those you directly influence ; that 
the State cannot reach. But when you open your 
door and say to your fellow-citizens, ' Come and in- 
dulge,' the State has a right to ask, 'In what do you 
invite them to indulge ? Is it in something that helps, 
or something that harms, the community ? ' " 
********** 

In our recent war it is scarcely needful to say that 
Mr. Phillips has always been a counsellor for the most 
thorough, the most intrepid and most efficient meas- 
ures. 

During the period of comparative vacillation and 
uncertainty, when McClellan was the commander-in- 
chief, and war was being made on political principles, 
Mr. Phillips did his utmost in speeches and public ad- 
dresses in the papers, to stir up the people to demand 
a more efficient policy. 

Since the termination of the war and the emanci- 
pation of the slave, Mr. Phillips seems to show that 
the class of gifts and faculties adapted to rouse a stu- 
pid community, and to force attention to neglected 
truths are not those most adapted to the delicate 
work of reconstruction. The good knight who can cut 
and hew in battle, cannot always do the surgeon's 



500 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

work of healing and restoring. That exacting ide- 
ality which is the leading faculty of Mr. Phillips' na- 
ture leads him constantly to undervalue what has been 
attained, and it is to be regretted that it deprived him 
of the glow and triumph of a victory in which no man 
than he better deserved to rejoice. 

Garrison hung up his shield and sword at a definite 
point, and marked the era of-victory with devout thank- 
fulness ; and we can but regret, that the more exact- 
ing mind of Phillips was too much fixed on what yet 
was wanting to share the well earned joy. 

When there is strong light there must be shadow, 
and the only shadow we discern in the public virtues 
of Mr. Phillips is the want of a certain power to ap- 
preciate and make allowances for the necessary weak- 
nesses and imperfections of human nature. 

He has been a teacher of the school of the law rath- 
er than that of the Gospel ; he has been most espec- 
ially useful because we have been in a state where such 
stern unflinching teachings have been indispensable. 

Mr. Phillips' methods indeed, of dealing with human 
nature, savor wholly of the law and remind us forcibly 
of the pithy and vigorous account which John Bun- 
yan puts into the mouth of his pilgrim. 

" I saw one coming after me swift as the wind, 
and so soon as the man overtook me, it was but a 
word and a blow, for down he knocked me and laid 
me for dead. But when I was a little come to myself 
I asked him wherefore he served me so. He said be- 
cause of my secret inclining to Adam the first, and 
with that he struck me another deadly blow on the 
breast, and beat me down backward, and so I lay at 



CHANGE OF TONE RECOMMENDED. 501 

his foot as dead as before. So when I came to my- 
self, I cried him mercy ; but he said, I know not how 
to show mercy, and with that he knocked me down 
ao-ain. He had doubtless made an end of me but that 
one came by and bid him forbear. 

Who was he that bid him forbear ? I did not know 
him at first but as he went by, I perceived the holes 
in his hands and his side." 

There is a time for all things, and this stern work of 
the land had to be done in our country. Almighty 
God seconded it by awful providences, and pleaded 
against the oppressor in the voice of famine and bat- 
tle, of fire and sword. 

The guilty land had been riven and torn, and in the 
language of scripture, made an astonishment and a 
desolation ! 

May we not think now that the task of binding up 
the wounds of a bruised and shattered country, of re- 
conciling jarring interests thrown into new and deli- 
cate relationships, of bringing peace to sore and wea- 
ried nerves, and abiding quiet to those who are fated 
to dwell side by side in close proximity, may require 
faculties of a wider and more varied adaptation, and 
a spirit breathing more of Calvary and less of Sinai? 

It is no discredit to the good sword gapped with the 
blows of a hundred battle fields, to hang it up in all 
honor, as having done its work. 

It has made place for a thousand other forces and 
influences each powerless without it, but each now 
more powerful and more efficient in their own field. 

Those who are so happy as to know Mr. Phillips 
personally, are fully aware how entirely this unflinch- 
31 



502 WENDELL PHILLIPS. 

ing austerity of judgment, this vigorous severity of ex- 
action, belong to his public character alone, how full 
of genial urbanity they find the private individual. 
We may be pardoned for expressing the hope that the 
time may yet come when he shall see his way clear to 
take counsel in public matters with his own kindly impul- 
ses, and that those genial traits which render his private 
intercourse so agreeable, may be allowed to modify at 
least his public declarations. 




^ 




^rh^jee.aAj^ 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

Mr. Beecher a Younger Child — Death of his Mother — His Step-Mother's 
Eeligious Influence — Ma'am Kilbourn's School — The Passing Bell — Unprofit- 
able Schooling — An Inveterate School Joker — Masters the Latin Grammar 
— Goes to Amherst College — His Love of Flowers — Modes of Study; a 
Reformer — Mr. Beecher and the Solemn Tutor — His Favorite Poetry— His 
Introduction to Phrenology— His Mental Philosophy — Doctrine of Spiritual 
Intuition — Punctuality for Joke's Sake — Old School and New School — Doubts 
on Entering the Ministry — Settlement at Lawrenceburg — His Studies ; First 
Revival — Large Accessions to the Church — "Tropical Style" — Ministerial 
Jokes — Slavery in the Pulpit — The Transfer to Brooklyn — Plymouth Church 
Preaching — Visit to England — Speeches in England — Letters from England — 
Christian View of England — The Exeter Hall Speech — Preaches an Unpop- 
ular Forgiveness. 

Henry Ward Beecher was the eighth child of Ly- 
man and Roxana Foote Beecher, born in Litchfield, 
Connecticut, June 24, 1813. The first child of a fam- 
ily is generally an object of high hope and anxious and 
careful attention. They are observed, watched — and 
if the parents are so disposed, carefully educated, and 
often over-watched and over-educated. But in large 
families, as time rolls on and children multiply, espec- 
ially to those in straitened worldly circumstances, all 
the interest of novelty dies out before the advent of 
younger children, and they are apt to find their way 
in early life unwatched and unheralded. Dr. Beech- 
er's salary was eight hundred dollars a year, not al- 
ways promptly paid. This made the problem of feed- 

505 



506 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ing, clothing and educating a family of ten children a 
dark one. The family was constantly enlarged by 
boarders, young ladies attending the female academy, 
and whose board helped somewhat to the support of 
the domestic establishment, but added greatly to the 
cares of the head manager. The younger members 
of the Beecher family therefore came into existence 
in a great bustling household of older people, all go- 
ing their separate ways, and having their own grown- 
up interests to carry. The child, growing up in this 
busy, active circle, had constantly impressed upon it 
a sense of personal insignificance as a child, and the 
absolute need of the virtue of passive obedience and 
non-resistance as regards all grown-up people. To be 
statedly washed and dressed and catechised, got to 
school at regular hours in the morning, and to bed 
inflexibly at the earliest possible hour at night, com- 
prised about all the attention that children could receive 
in those days. 

The mother of Henry "Ward died when he was 
three years old ; his father was immersed in theologi- 
cal investigations and a wide sphere of pastoral labors 
and great general ecclesiastical interests, his grown- 
up brothers and sisters in their own separate life his- 
tory, and the three younger children were therefore 
left to their mortal pilgrimage, within certain well- 
defined moral limits, much after their own way. The 
step-mother, who took the station of mother, was a 
lady of great personal elegance and attractiveness, of 
high intellectual and moral culture, who from having 
been in early life the much admired belle in general 
society, came at last from an impulse of moral heroism 



his step-mother's religious influence. 507 

combined with personal attachment, to undertake the 
austere labors of a poor minister's family. She was a 
person to make a deep impression on the minds of 
any children. There was a moral force about her, a 
dignity of demeanor, an air of elegance and superior 
breeding, which produced a constant atmosphere of 
unconscious awe in the minds of little ones. Then 
her duties were onerous, her conscience inflexible, and 
under the weight of these her stock of health and 
animal spirits sunk, so that she was for the most part 
pensive and depressed. Her nature and habits were 
too refined and exacting for the bringing up of chil- 
dren of great animal force and vigor, under the strain 
and pressure of straitened circumstances. The absurd- 
ities and crudenesses incident to the early days of such 
children appeared to her as serious faults, and weigh- 
ed heavily on her conscience. The most intense posi- 
tive religious and moral influence the three little ones 
of the family received was on Sunday night, when it 
was her custom to take them to her bed-room and 
read and talk and pray with them. At these times, 
deep though vague religious yearnings were created ; 
but as she was much of her time an invalid, and had 
little sympathy with the ordinary feelings of child- 
hood, she gave an impression of religion as being like 
herself, calm, solemn, inflexible, mysteriously sad and 
rigorously exacting. 

In those days none of the attentions were paid 
to children that are now usual. The community did 
not recognize them. There was no child's literature ; 
there were no children's books. The Sunday school 
was yet an experiment, in a fluctuating, uncertain 



508 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

state of trial. There were no children's days of pres- 
ents and fetes — no Christmas or New Year's festivals. 
The annual thanksgiving was only associated with one 
day's unlimited range of pies of every sort — too much 
for one day, and too soon things of the past. The 
childhood of Henry Ward was unmarked by the pos- 
session of a single child's toy as a gift from any older 
person, or a single fete. Very early, too, strict duties 
devolved upon him ; a daily portion of the work of 
the establishment, the care of the domestic animals, 
the cutting and piling of wood, or tasks in the garden 
strengthened his muscles and gave vigor and tone to 
his nerves. From his father and mother he inherited 
a perfectly solid, healthy organization of brain, muscle 
and nerves, and the uncaressing, let-alone system un- 
der which he was brought up, gave him early habits 
of vigor and self-reliance. 

Litchfield was a mountain town, where the winter 
was a stern reality for six months of the year, where 
there were giant winds, and drifting snows of immeas- 
urable depth, and ice and sleet storms of a sublime 
power and magnitude. Under this rugged nursing he 
grew outwardly vigorous. At nine years of age, in 
one of those winter droughts common in New En Hand 
towns, he harnessed the horse to a sledge with a bar- 
rel lashed thereon, and went off alone three miles 
over the icy top of the town hill, to dip up and bring 
home a barrel of water from a distant spring. So far 
from taking this as a hardship, he undertook it with a 
chivalric pride. His only trial in the case was the hu- 
miliation of being positively commanded by his care- 
ful step-mother to wear his overcoat ; he departed 



ma'am kilbourn's school. 509 

obedient, but with tears of mortification freezing on 
his cheeks, for he had recorded a heroic vow to go 
through a whole winter without once wearing an over- 
coat. 

For education, technically so called, there were small 
advantages. His earliest essay of letters was to walk 
over to West street, to a widow Kilbourn's, where he sat 
daily on a bench kicking his heels in idleness, and said 
his letters twice in the day, and was for so long out of 
the way of the grown folks, which was a main point 
in child schooling. There was a tinner's shop hard 
by, and the big girls, some of them, contrived to saw 
off some of his long golden curls with tin shears con- 
trived from the fragments cast out of the shop. The 
child was annoyed, but dared not complain to any 
purpose, till the annoyance being stated at home, it 
was concluded that the best way to abate it was to cut 
off all the curls altogether, and with the loss of these 
he considered his manhood to commence. Next, a 
small, unpainted, district school-house being erected 
within a stone's throw of the parsonage, he graduated 
from Ma'am Kilbourn's thither. The children of all 
the farming population in the neighborhood gathered 
there. The exercises consisted in daily readings of 
the Bible and the Columbian Orator, in elementary ex- 
ercises in arithmetic, and hand-writing. The ferule 
and a long flexible hickory switch were the insignia 
of office of the school mistress. No very striking 
early results were the outcome of this teaching. 
Henry Ward was not marked out by the prophecies 
of partial friends for any brilliant future. He had pre- 
cisely the organization which often passes for dullness 



510 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

in early boyhood. He had great deficiency in ver- 
bal memory, a deficiency marked in him through life ; 
he was excessively sensitive to praise and blame, ex- 
tremely diffident, and with a power of yearning, un- 
developed emotion, which he neither understood nor 
could express. His utterance was thick and indistinct, 
partly from bashfulness and partly from an enlarge- 
ment of the tonsils of the throat, so that in speaking 
or reading he was with difficulty understood. In fore- 
casting his horoscope, had any one taken the trouble 
then to do it, the last success that ever would have 
been predicted for him would have been that of an 
orator. "When Henry is sent to me with a message," 
said a good aunt, "I always have to make him say it 
three times. The first time I have no manner of an 
idea more than if he spoke Choctaw ; the second, I 
catch now and then a word ; by the third time I begin 
to understand." 

Thus, while Dr. Beecher victoriously demonstrated 
the consistency of decrees and accountability, and the 
elder brother was drawing all the hopes of the family 
as the first in his college class, and his elder sisters 
were writing poetry and receiving visits, and carrying 
on the cheerful round of Litchfield society, this bash- 
ful, dazed-looking boy pattered barefoot to and from 
the little unpainted school-house, with a brown towel 
or a blue checked apron to hem during the intervals 
between his spelling and reading lessons. Nobody 
thought much of his future, further than to see that 
he was safe and healthy, or even troubled themselves 
to inquire what might be going on in his life. 



THE PASSING BELL. 511 

But the child most let alone, is nevertheless being 
educated gradually and insensibly. The calm, inflexi- 
ble, elegant breeding of the step-mother, her intense 
solemnity of religious responsibility, indicating itself 
in every chance look or motion, fell on the sensitive 
child-nature like a constant moral stimulant. When a 
little fellow, whose small feet could not touch the bot- 
tom of the old family chaise, he was once driving with 
her on an errand. The bell tolled for a death, as was 
then the custom in rural places. "Henry, what do 
you think of when you hear a bell tolling like that ?" 
she said. Astonished and awe-struck at having his 
thoughts inquired into, the child only flushed, and 
colored and looked abashed, and she went on as in a 
quiet soliloquy, "i" think, was that soul prepared? It 
has gone into eternity ! " The effect on the child's 
mind was a shiver of dread, like the being turned out 
without clothing among the icy winds of Litchfield 
hills. The vague sense of infinite, inevitable doom un- 
derlying all the footsteps of life, added to a natural 
disposition to yearning and melancholy. The scenery 
around the parsonage fed the yearning — Chestnut Hill 
on one side, with its lovely, softly wooded slopes, and 
waving grain-fields; on the other, Mount Tom, with 
steel-blue pines and a gleaming lake mirror at its 
feet. Then there was the piano always going, and 
the Scotch airs, Roslin Castle, Mary's Dream, and 
Bonnie Doon, sounding out from the parlor windows, 
and to which the boy listened in a sort of troublous 
and dreamy mixture of sadness and joy, and walked 
humming to himself with tears in his eyes. 



512 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

The greatest trial of those days was the catechism. 
Sunday lessons were considered by the rnother-in-law 
as inflexible duty, and the catechism as the sine qua 
non. The other children memorized readily and were 
brilliant reciters, but Henry, blushing, stammering, 
confused and hopelessly miserable, stuck fast on some 
sand-bank of what is required or forbidden by this or 
that commandment, his mouth choking up with the 
long words which he hopelessly miscalled ; was sure to 
be accused of idleness or inattention, and to be solemnly 
talked to, which made him look more stolid and mise- 
rable than ever, but appeared to have no effect in 
quickening his dormant faculties. 

When he was ten years old, he was a stocky, strong, 
well-grown boy, loyal in duty, trained in unquestion- 
ing obedience, inured to patient hard work, inured 
also to the hearing and discussing of all the great the- 
ological problems of Calvinism, which were always 
reverberating in his hearing ; but as to any mechanical 
culture, in an extremely backward state — a poor 
writer, a miserable speller, with a thick utterance, and 
a bashful reticence which seemed like stolid stupidity. 
He was now placed at a private school in the neigh- 
boring town of Bethlehem, under the care of the Rev. 
Mr. Langdon, to commence a somewhat more careful 
course of study. Here an incident occurred which 
showed that the boy even at that early age felt a mis- 
sion to defend opinions. A forward school-boy, 
among the elder scholars, had got hold of Paine's Age 
of Reason, and was flourishing largely among the boys 
with objections to the Bible, drawn therefrom. Henry 
privately looked up Watson's Apology, studied up the 



UNPROFITABLE SCHOOLING. 513 

subject, and challenged a debate with the big boy, in 
which he came off victorious by the acclamation of 
his school-fellows. 

His progress in book-learning, however, was slow, 
though his year at the place was one of great happi- 
ness. One trait of the boy, as it has been with the 
man, was a peculiar passion for natural scenery, which 
he found full liberty to indulge in his present sur- 
roundings. He boarded with a large-hearted, kindly, 
motherly woman, in a great comfortable farm-house, 
where everything was free and unconstrained. The 
house was backed by a generous old orchard, full of 
fruits and blossoms in spring and summer, and where 
the partridges drummed and whirred in winter. Be- 
yond that were dreamy depths of woodland, and 
Henry's studies were mostly with gun on shoulder, 
roving the depths of those forests, guiltless of hitting 
anything, because the time was lost in dreamy con- 
templation. Thence returning unprepared for school, 
he would be driven to the expedient of writing out 
his Latin verb and surreptitiously reading it out of the 
crown of his hat, an exercise from whence he reaped 
small profit, either mentally or morally. In short, 
after a year spent in this way, it began to be perceived 
by the elders of the family, that as to the outward and 
visible signs of learning, he was making no progress. 
His eldest sister was then teaching a young lady's 
school in Hartford, and it was proposed to take the 
boy under her care to see what could be made of him. 

One boy of eleven in a school of thirty or forty girls 
has not much chance of making a durable impression, 
but we question if any of Henry's school mates easily 



514 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

| 

forgot him. If the under stratum of his nature was a 
dreamy yearning melancholy, its upper manifestation 
was in constant bubbling, restless effervescence of fun 
and practical joking. The school room was up a long 
flight of stairs, and one wet day Henry spent a recess 
when he was supposed to be studying grammar, in 
opening every umbrella brought to school, and so dis- 
posing them on the stairs that the luckless person who 
opened the outside door would witness a precipitate 
rush of the whole series into the street — which feat 
was successfully accomplished to the dismay of the 
late comer, and the tittering of the whole school, who 
had been somewhat prepared for the catastrophe. 

The school room was divided into two divisions in 
grammar, under leaders on either side, and the gram- 
matical reviews were contests for superiority in which 
it was vitally important that every member should be 
perfected. Henry was generally the latest choice, and 
fell on his side as an unlucky accession — being held 
more amusing than profitable on such occasions. 

The fair leader on one of these divisions took the 
boy aside to a private apartment, to put into him with 
female tact and insinuation those definitions and dis- 
tinctions on which the honor of the class depended. 

" Now Henry, A is the indefinite article, you see— 
and must be used only with a singular noun. You can 
say a man — but you can't say a men, can you ?" "Yes, 
I can say Amen too," was the ready rejoinder. "Father 
says it always at the end of his prayers." 

"Come Henry, now don't be joking; now decline He." 
"Nominative he, possessive his, objective him." "You 
see, His is possessive. Now you ^can say, His book — 



AN INVETERATE SCHOOL JOKER. 515 

but you can't say 'Him book."' "Yes I do say 
Hymn book too," said the impracticable scholar with a 
quizzical twinkle. Each one of these sallies made his 
young teacher laugh, which was the victory he wanted. 

"But now Henry, seriously, just attend to the active 
and passive voice. Now ' I strike ' is active, you see, 
because if you strike you do something. But C I am 
struck,' is passive, because if you are struck you don't 
do any thing do you ?" 

"Yes I do — I strike back again! " 

Sometimes his views of philosophical subjects were 
offered gratuitously. Being held rather of a frisky 
nature, his sister appointed his seat at her elbow, when 
she heard her classes. A class in Natural Philosophy, 
not very well prepared, was stumbling through the 
theory of the tides. "I can explain that," said Henry. 
" Well, you see, the sun, he catches hold of the moon 
and pulls her, and she catches hold of the sea and pulls 
that, and this makes the spring tides. 

a But what makes the neap tides ? " 

" Oh, that's when the sun stops to spit on his hands," 
was the brisk rejoinder. 

After about six months, Henry was returned on his 
parents' hands with the reputation of being an invet- 
erate joker, and an indifferent scholar. It was the 
opinion of his class that there was much talent lying 
about loosely in him if he could only be brought to 
apply himself. 

When he was twelve years of age his father moved 
to Boston. It was a great change to the two younger 
boys, from the beautiful rural freedom of a picturesque 



516 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

mountain town to the close, strait limits of a narrow 
street in Boston. 

There was a pure and vigorous atmosphere of moral 
innocence about the mountain towns of Connecticut in 
those days, which made the breeding up of children 
on the let-alone system quite feasible. There was no 
temptation to vice or immorality. The only asso- 
ciate of doubtful character forbidden to Henry, for 
whose society he craved, was Ulysses Freeman, a 
poor, merry, softly giggling negro boy, who inhab- 
ited a hut not far off, and who, it was feared, might 
indiscreetly teach him something that he ought not 
to know — but otherwise it was safe to let him run 
unwatched, in the wholesome companionship of bob- 
o'links and squirrels and birch woods and huckle- 
berry bushes. There was not in all Litchfield in those 
days any thing to harm a growing boy, or lead him 
into evil. 

But in Boston, the streets, the wharves, the ship 
yards, were full of temptation — the house, narrow and 
strait. The boy was put into the Boston Latin School, 
where the whole educational process was a solid square 
attempt to smite the Latin grammar into minds of all ' 
sorts and sizes, by a pressure like that by which coin 
is stamped in the mint. Educated in loyal obedience 
as a religion and a habit, pushed up to make the effort 
by the entreaties of his father, by appeals to his gal- 
lantry in overcoming difficulties, his sense of family 
honor, and the solemn appeals to conscience of his 
mother, Henry set himself doggedly to learn lists 
of prepositions and terminations, and bead-rolls of nouns 
that found their accusatives or genitives in this way 



MASTERED THE LATIN GRAMMAR. 517 

or that, except in the case of two dozen exceptions, 
when they formed them in some other way, with all 
the other dry prickly facts of language with which it 
is deemed expedient to choke the efforts of beginners. 

It was to him a grim Sinaitic desert, a land of dark- 
ness without order, where he wandered, seeing neither 
tree or flower ; a wilderness of meaningless forms and 
sounds. His life was a desolation, a blind push to do what 
was most contrary to his natural faculties, repulsive to his 
tastes, and in which with utmost stress and strain of ef- 
fort he could never hope to rise above mediocrity. One 
year passed in this way, and with the fear of disgrace in 
the rear and conscience and affection goading him on, 
Henry had actually mastered the Latin grammar, and 
could give any form or inflection, rule or exception 
therein, but at an expense of brain and nerve that be- 
gan to tell even on his vigorous organization. 

The era of fermentation and development was upon 
him, and the melancholy that had brooded over his 
childhood waxed more turbulent and formidable. He 
grew gloomy and moody, restless and irritable. His 
father, noticing the change, got him on a course of 
biographical reading, hoping to divert his thoughts. 
He began to read naval histories, the lives of great 
sailors and commanders — the voyages of Captain Cook, 
the biography of Nelson ; and immediately,, like light- 
ning flashing out of rolling clouds, came the determin- 
ation not to rest any longer in Boston, learning ter- 
minations and prepositions, but to go forth to a life of 
enterprise. He made up his little bundle, walked the 
wharf and talked with sailors and captains, hovered 
irresolute on the verge of voyages, never quite able 



518 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

to grieve his father by a sudden departure. At last 
he wrote a letter announcing to a brother that he could 
and would no longer remain at school — that he had 
made up his mind for the sea; that if not permitted to 
go, he should go without permission. This letter was 
designedly dropped where his father picked it up. 
Dr. Beecher put it in his pocket and said nothing for 
the moment, but the next day asked Henry to help 
him saw wood. Now the wood-pile was the Doctor's 
favorite debating ground, and Henry felt compliment- 
ed by the invitation, as implying manly companion- 
ship. 

" Let us see," says the Doctor, "Henry, how old are 
you?" 

" Almost fourteen ! " 

" Bless me ! how boys do grow ! — Why it's almost 
time to be thinking what you are going to do. Have 
you ever thought ? " 

" Yes — I want to go to sea." 

" To sea ! Of all things ! Well, well ! After all, why 
not ? — Of course you don't want to be a common sailor. 
You want to get into the navy ? " 

" Yes sir, that's what I want." 

" But not merely as a common sailor, I suppose? " 

" No sir, I want to be midshipman, and after that 
commodore." 

" I see," said the Doctor, cheerfully, "Well, Henry, in 
order for that, you know, you must begin a course of 
mathematics, and study navigation and all that." 

"Yes sir, I am ready." 

" Well then, I'll send you up to Amherst next week, 
to Mount Pleasant, and then you'll begin your prepar- 



GOES TO AMHERST. 519 

atory studies, and if you are well prepared, I presume 
I can make interest to get you an appointment." 

And so lie went to Mount Pleasant, in Amherst, 
Mass., and Dr. Beecher said shrewdly, "I shall have 
that boy in the ministry yet," 

The transfer from the confined limits of a city to 
the congenial atmosphere of a beautiful mountain town 
brought an immediate favorable change. Here he 
came under the care of a mathematical teacher, edu- 
cated at West Point, a bright attractive young man 
of the name of Fitzgerald, with whom he roomed. 
Between this young man and the boy, there arose a 
romantic friendship. Henry had no natural talent or 
taste for mathematics, but inspired by a desire to please 
his friend, and high ambition for his future profession, 
he went into them with energy, and soon did credit to 
his teacher at the blackboard, laboring, perseveringly 
with his face towards the navy, and Nelson as his beau 
ideal. 

Here also he was put through a strict drill in elocu- 
tion by Professor John E. Lovell, now residing in New 
Haven, Conn. Of him, Mr. Beecher cherishes a grate- 
ful recollection, and never fails to send him a New 
Year's token of remembrance. He says of him, that 
" a better teacher in his department never was made." 
Mr. Beecher had many natural disabilities for the line 
of oratory ; and their removal so far as to make him an 
acceptable speaker he holds due to the persevering 
drill of Mr. Lovell. His voice, naturally thick and 
husky, was developed by most persevering, systematic 
training. His gestures and the management of his body 
went through a drill corresponding to that which the 
32 



520 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

military youth goes through at West Point, to make 
his body supple to the exigencies of military evolution. 
As an orator, this early training was of vital import- 
ance to him. He could never have attained success 
without it. 

At the close of the first year, a revival of religion 
passed through the school, and Henry Ward and 
many others were powerfully impressed. It was in 
fact, on the part of the boy, the mere flashing out into 
visible form of that deep undercurrent of religious sen- 
sibility which had been the habit of his life, and the 
result of his whole home education. His father sent 
for him home to unite with the church on a great com- 
munion season ; and the boy, trembling, agitated, awe- 
struck, full of vague purposes and good resolutions 
and imperfectly developed ideas, stood up and took 
on him irrevocable vows, henceforth in his future life 
to be actively and openly on the side of Christ, in the 
great life battle. 

Of course the naval scheme vanished, and the pul- 
pit opened before him as his natural sphere. With 
any other father or education, this would not have been 
an "of course ;" but Dr. Beecher was an enthusiast in 
his profession. Every word of his life, every action 
or mode of speaking, had held it up before his boys as 
the goal of all his hopes, that they should preach the 
gospel, and the boy therefore felt that to be the nec- 
essary obligation which came upon him in joining the 
church. He returned to Amherst, where his classical 
education was continued for two years longer, with a 
view to fit him for college. 



EIS LOVE OF FLOWERS. 521 

The love of flowers, which has always formed so 
marked a branch of his general enthusiasm for nature, 
developed itself at this time in a friendship with a 
rather rough man who kept a garden. He was so 
pleased with the boy's enthusiasm that he set apart a 
scrap of ground for him which he filled with roses, 
geraniums and other blooming wonders, and these 
Henry tended under his instructions. 

At that time the love of nature was little cultivated 
among the community. By very many good people, 
nature was little spoken of except as the antithesis 
to grace. It was the tempter, the syren that drew the 
soul from higher duties. The chaplain of Mount Pleas- 
ant Institute, a grave and formal divine, found Henry 
on his knees in his little flower patch, lost in raptur- 
ous contemplations of buds and blossoms. He gave 
him an indulgent smile, but felt it his duty to improve 
the occasion. 

" Ah, Henry," he said condescendingly, as one who 
makes a fair admission, " these things are pretty, very 
pretty, but my boy, do you think that such things are 
worthy to occupy the attention of a man who has an 
immortal soul ? " Henry answered only by that abashed 
and stolid look which covered from the eyes of his 
superiors, so much of what was going on within him, 
and went on with attentions to his flowers. " I want- 
ed to tell him," he said afterwards, "that since Almighty 
God has found leisure to make those trifles, it could 
not be amiss for us to find time to look at them." By 
the time that Henry had been three years in Amherst 
he was prepared to enter Sophomore in College. 
Thanks to his friend and teacher Fitzgerald, his math- 



522 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ematiccal training had given him the entire mastery of 
La Croix's Algebra, so that he was prepared to de- 
monstrate at random any proposition as chance select- 
ed — not only without aid or prompting from the teach- 
er, but controversially as against the teacher, who would 
sometimes publicly attack the pupil's method of de- 
monstration, disputing him step by step, when the 
scholar was expected to know with such positive clear- 
ness as to put down and overthrow the teacher. "You 
must not only know, but you must know that you 
know," was Fitzgerald's maxim; and Henry Ward 
attributes much of his subsequent habit of steady an- 
tagonistic defence of his own opinions to this early 
mathematical training. 

Though prepared for the Sophomore class, his father 
however, deemed it best on the whole, that he 
should enter as freshman, and the advanced state of 
his preparation therefore gave him leisure the first 
year to mark out and commence a course of self-edu- 
cation by means of the college libraries, which he 
afterwards systematically pursued through college life. 
In fact he gave no more attention to the college course 
than was absolutely essential to keep his standing, but 
turned all the power of study and concentrated at- 
tention he had acquired in his previous years, upon his 
own plan of culture. As he himself remarks, " I had 
acquired by the Latin and mathematics, the power of 
study. I knew how to study, and I turned it upon 
things I wanted to know." The Latin and Greek class- 
ics did not attract him. The want of social warmth 
in the remove at which they stood from the living 



MODES OF STUDY A REFORMER. 523 

present, alienated them from the sympathies of one 
who felt his mission to be among the men of to-day, 
and by its living literature. Oratory and rhetoric he 
regarded as his appointed weapons, and he began to 
prepare himself in the department of hoiv to say — 
meanwhile contemplating with uncertain awe, the great 
future problem of what to say. 

For the formation of style he began a course of 
English classical study ; Milton's prose works, Bacon, 
Shakspeare, and the writers of the Elizabethan period 
were his classics, read and re-read, and deeply pon- 
dered. In common with most of the young men of 
his period, he was a warm admirer of the writings of 
Robert Hall, and added him to his list of favorite au- 
thors. His habits of study were somewhat peculiar. 
He had made for himself at the carpenter's, a circular 
table, with a hole in the middle, where was fixed a 
seat. Enthroned in this seat with his English classics 
all around him, he read and pondered, and with never 
ceasing delight. 

The stand he took in college, was from the first that 
of a reformer. He was always on the side of law and 
order, and being one of the most popular fellows in his 
class, threw the whole weight of his popularity in favor 
of the faculty, rather than against them. He and his as- 
sociates formed a union of merry good fellows, who 
were to have glorious fun, but to have it only by honor- 
able and permissible means. They voted down scraping 
in the lecture rooms, and hazing of students ; they voted 
down gambling and drinking, and every form of secret 
vice, and made the class rigidly temperate and pure. 
Mr. Beecher had received from family descent what 



524 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

iniglit be called a strictly temperance organization. In no 
part of his life did he ever use, or was he ever tempt- 
ed to use tobacco or ardent spirits in any shape. All 
his public labors, like those of his father before him, 
have been performed by the strict legal income of or- 
dinary nervous investment ; they have not been those 
deep ruinous drafts on the reserved principal of vital 
force, which are drawn by the excitements of extra 
stimulants. 

He also maintained the character of a Christian stu- 
dent, by conscientious attention to the class prayer 
meetiDgs, in which he took his part, as well as by out- 
side religious and temperance labors in the rural pop- 
ulation in the neighborhood. He very early formed 
an attachment to a beneficiary in the college, a man, as 
he says, of the Isaiah type, large-souled, and full of 
devotion, who took the boy round with him on his 
tour of religious exhortation, insisting with paternal 
earnestness that it was his immediate duty to begin to 
practice for the work of the Christian ministry. Hav- 
ing brought him once or twice to read and pray, in a 
little rural meeting, held in a school-house in the out- 
skirts of the village, he solemnly committed the future 
care of the meeting to the young disciple, and went 
himself to look up another fold. This meeting Henry 
religiously kept up among his others, with varying 
success, during his college career. 

The only thing which prevented him from taking the 
first rank as a religious young man, was the want of 
that sobriety and solemnity which was looked upon as 
essential to the Christian character. Mr. Beech er was 
like a converted bob-o'link, who should be brought to 



MR. BEE CHER AND THE SOLEMN TUTOR. 525 

judgment for short quirks and undignified twitters 
and tweedles, among the daisy heads, instead of fly- 
ing in dignified paternal sweeps, like a good swallow 
of the sanctuary, or sitting in solemnized meditation 
in the depths of pine trees like the owl. 

His commendation from the stricter brethren gen- 
erally came with the sort of qualification which Shaks- 
peare makes, — 

" For the man doth fear God, howbeit it doth not 
always appear, by reason of some large jests which he 
will make." 

In fact, Mr. Beecher was generally the center of a 
circle of tempestuous merriment, ever eddying round 
him in one droll form or another. He was quick in 
repartee, an excellent mimic, and his stories would 
set the gravest in a roar. He had the art, when ad- 
monished by graver people, of somehow entrapping 
them into more uproarious laughing than he himself 
practiced, and then looking innocently surprised. Mr. 
Beecher on one occasion was informed that the head 
tutor of the class was about to make him a grave ex- 
hortatory visit. The tutor was almost seven feet high, 
and solemn as an Alpine forest, but Mr. Beecher knew 
that like most solemn Yankees, he was at heart a deplor- 
able wag, a mere whited sepulchre of conscientious 
gravity, with measureless depths of unrenewed chuck- 
le hid away in the depths of his heart. When apprised 
of his approach, he suddenly whisked into the wood- 
closet the chairs of his room, leaving only a low one 
which had been sawed off at the second joint, so that 
it stood about a foot from the floor. Then he crawled 



526 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

through the hole in his table, and seated meekly 
among his books, awaited the visit. 

A grave rap, is heard: — "Come in." 

Far up in the air, the solemn dark face appears. 
Mr. Beecherrose ingenuously, and offered to come out. 
" No, never mind," says the visitor, " I just came to 
have a little conversation with you. Don't move." 

" Oh," says Beecher innocently, " pray sit down 
sir," indicating the only chair. 

The tutor looked apprehensively, but began the 
process of sitting down. He went down, down, down, 
but still no solid ground being gained, straightened 
himself and looked uneasy. 

" I don't know but that chair is too low for you," 
said Beecher meekly ; "do let me get you another." 

" Oh no, no, my young friend, don't rise, don't troub- 
le yourself, it is perfectly agreeable to me, in fact I 
like a low seat," and with these words, the tall man 
doubled up like a jack-knife, and was seen sitting with 
his grave face between his knees, like a grass-hopper 
drawn up for a spring. He heaved a deep sigh, and 
his eyes met the eyes of Mr. Beecher ; the hidden spark 
of native depravity within him was exploded by one 
glance at those merry eyes, and he burst into a loud roar 
of merriment, which the two continued for some time, 
greatly to the amusement of the boys, who were watch- 
ing to hear how Beecher would come out with his lec- 
ture. The chair was known in college afterwards, by 
the surname of the " Tutor's Delight." This overflow 
of the faculty of mirthfulness, has all his life deceived 
those who had only a shallow acquaintance with him, 
and men ignorant of the depth of yearning earnest- 



HIS FAVORITE POETRY. 527 

ness and profound strength of purpose on which they 
rippled and sparkled. 

But at the time that he passed for the first humorist 
of college, the marks along his well worn volumes of 
the old English poets show only appreciation of 
what is earnest, deep and pathetic. He particularly 
loved an obscure old poet of whom we scarcely hear 
in modern days, Daniel, who succeeded Edmund Spen- 
ser as poet laureate, and was a friend of Shakspeare. 

Some lines addressed by him to the Earl of South- 
ampton, are marked by reiterated lines in Mr. Beech- 
er's copy of the old English poets, which showed en- 
thusiastic reading. He says, "This was about the only 
piece of poetry I ever committed to memory, but I 
read it so much I could not help at last knowing it by 
heart:" 

"TO THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON, 

" He who hath never warred with misery, 
Nor ever tugged with fortune in distress, 
Hath no occasion and no field to try 
The strength and forces of his worthiness. 
Those parts of judgment which felicity 
Keeps as concealed, affliction must express, 
And only men show their abilities 
And what they are, in their extremities. 

" Mutius the fire, the tortures Regulus, 
Did make the miracles of faith and zeal ; 
Exile renowned and graced Rutilius. 
Imprisonment and poison did reveal 
The worth of Socrates, Fabricius' 
Poverty did grace that common weal 
More than all Sylla's riches got with strife, 
And Cato's death did vie with Caesar's life. 



528 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

" He that endures for what his conscience knows 
Not to be ill, doth from a patience high 
Look on the only cause whereto he owes 
Those sufferings, not on his misery ; 
The more he endures the more his glory grows, 
Which never grows from imbecility ; 
Only the best composed and worthiest hearts 
God sets to act the hardest and constant 'st parts." 

Sucti an enthusiasm shows clearly on what a key 
the young man had set his life purposes, and what he 
was looking for in his life battle. 

Another poem which bears reiterated marks and 
dates, is to Lady Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, 
of which these lines are a sample : 

" He that of such a height hath built his mind, 
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong 
As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame 
Of his resolved powers ; nor all the wind 
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong 
His settled peace, or to disturb the same ; 
What a fair seat hath he ! from whence he may 
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey ! 

" And while distraught ambition compasses 
And is compassed ; whilst as craft deceives 
And is deceived ; while man doth ransack man, 
And builds on blood, and ri?es by distress ; 
And the inheritance of desolation leaves 
To great expecting hopes ; he looks thereon, 
As from the shore of peace, with unwet eye, 
And bears no venture in impiety." 

These verses are so marked with Mr. Beecher's life 
habits of thought, with his modes of expression, that 
they show strongly the influence which these old poets 
had in forming both his habits of thought and expres- 



HIS INTRODUCTION TO PHRENOLOGY 529 

• 

sion. His mind naturally aspired after heroism, and 
from the time that he gave up his youthful naval en- 
thusiasm he turned the direction of the heroic faculties 
into moral things. 

In the course of the sophomore year, Mr. Beecher 
was led, as a mere jovial frolic, to begin a course of 
investigation which colored his whole after life. A 
tall, grave, sober fellow had been reading some arti- 
cles on Phrenology, on which Spurzheim was then 
lecturing in Boston, and avowed himself a convert. 
Quick as thought, the wits of college saw in this an 
occasion for glorious fun. They proposed to him with 
great apparent earnestness that he should deliver a 
course of lectures on the subject in Beecher' s room. 

With all simplicity and solemnity he complied, 
while the ingenuous young inquirers began busily arm- 
ing themselves with objections to and puzzles for him, 
by reading the scoffing articles in Blackwood and the 
Edinburgh. The fun waxed hearty, and many saw 
nothing in it but a new pasture ground to be ploughed 
and seeded down for an endless harvest of college 
jokes. But one day, one of the clearest headed and 
most powerful thinkers in the class said to Beecher, 
"What is your estimate of the real logical validity 
of these objections to Phrenology?" "Why," said 
Beecher, "I was thinking that if these objections were 
all that could be alleged, I could knock them to piec- 
es." "So I think," said the other. In fact, the inan- 
ity of the crusade against the theory brought forth 
converts faster than its direct defence. Mr. Beecher 
and his associates formed immediately a club for phys- 
iological research. He himself commenced reading 



530 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

right and left, in all the works of anatomy and phys- 
iology which he could lay hands on, either in the 
college or village libraries. He sent and bought for 
his own private use, Magendie's Physiology, Combe's 
Phrenology, and the w T orks of Gall and Spurzheim. 
A phrenological union was formed to purchase togeth- 
er charts, models and dissecting tools, for the study of 
comparative anatomy. It was even planned, in the 
enthusiasm of young discipleship, to establish a pri- 
vate dissecting room for the club, but the difficulties 
attending the procuring of proper subjects prevented 
its being carried into effect. By correspondence with 
his brother Charles, however, who was then in Bow- 
doin College, an affiliated phrenological club was 
formed in that institution, and his letters of this period 
were all on and about phrenological subjects, and in 
full phrenological dialect. Mr. Beecher delivered 
three lectures on the subject in the village lyceum, 
and did an infinity of private writing and study. 

He read the old English dramatists, particularly 
Ben Jouson, Massinger, Webster, Ford and Shakspeare, 
and wrote out analyses of their principal characters on 
phrenological principles. The college text-book of 
mental philosophy was Browne, and Mr. Beecher's 
copy of Browne is marked through and through, and 
interlined with comparative statements of the ideas 
derived from his physiological investigation. With 
these also he carefully read and analyzed Locke, Stu- 
art, Reid, and the other writers of the Scotch school. 
As a writer and debater, Mr. Beecher was acknowl- 
edged the first of the class, and was made first presi- 
dent of the Athenian Society, notwithstanding it had 



HIS MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. 531 

been a time-honored precedent that that- distinction 
should belong only to the presumptive valedictorian. 
The classics and mathematics he had abandoned be- 
cause of his interest in other things, but that abandon- 
ment settled the fact that he could never aspire to 
high college honors. He however, wrote for one of 
his papers in a college newspaper a vigorous defence 
of mathematical studies, which won the approbation 
and surprise of his teachers. It was a compliment 
paid by rhetoric to her silent sister. 

The phrenological and physiological course thus 
begun in college was pursued by few of the phreno- 
logical club in after life. "With many it died out as a 
boyish enthusiasm ; with one or two, as Messrs. Fowler 
of New York, it became a continuous source of inter- 
est and profit. With Mr. Beecher it led to a broad 
course of physiological study and enquiry, which, col- 
lated with metaphysics and theology, has formed his 
system of thought through life. From that day he 
has continued the reading and study of all the physio- 
logical writers in the English language. In fact, he 
may be said during his college life to have constructed 
for himself a physiological mental philosophy out of 
the writings of the Scotch metaphysical school and 
that of Combe, Spurzheim, and the other physiologists. 
Mr. Beecher is far from looking on phrenology as a 
perfected science. He regards it in relation to real 
truth as an artist's study towards a completed land- 
scape ; a study on right principles and in a right di- 
rection, but not as a completed work. In his view, 
the phrenologists, physiologists and mental philoso- 
phers of past days have all been partialists, giving a lim- 



532 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ited view of the great subject. The true mental philos- 
ophy, as he thinks, is yet to arise from a consideration 
of all the facts and principles evolved by all of them. 

Thus much is due for the understanding of Mr. 
Beecher's style, in which to a great extent he uses the 
phrenological terminology, a terminology so neat and 
descriptive, and definite in respect to human beings as 
they really exist, that it gives . a great advantage to 
any speaker. The terms of phrenology have in fact 
become accepted as conveniences in treating of human 
nature, as much as the algebraic signs in numbers. 

The depth of Mr. Beecher's religious nature pre- 
vented this enthusiasm for material science from degen- 
erating into dry materialism. He was a Calvin ist in 
the earnestness of his intense need of the highest and 
deepest in religion. In his sophomore year there was 
a revival of religion in college, in which his mind 
was powerfully excited. He reviewed the almost 
childish experiences under which he had joined the 
church, as possibly deceptive, and tried and disciplined 
himself by those profound tests with which the Ed- 
wardean theology had filled the minds of New Eng- 
land. A blank despair was the result. He applied to 
Dr. Humphrey, who simply told him that his present 
feelings were a work of the spirit, and with which he 
dared not interfere. After days of almost hopeless 
prayer, there came suddenly into his mind an ineffable 
and overpowering perception of the Divine love, 
which seemed to him like a revelation. It dispelled 
all doubts, all fears ; he became buoyant and triumph- 
ant, and that buoyancy has been marked in his reli- 
gious teachings ever since. 



DOCTRINE OF SPIRITUAL INTUITION. 533 

Mr. Beecher's doctrine upon the subject is that the 
truths of the Divine nature are undiscoverable by the 
mere logical faculties, that they are the province of a 
still higher class of faculties which belong to human 
nature, the faculties of spiritual intuition • that it is 
through these spiritual intuitions that the Holy Spirit 
of God communes with man, and directs through them 
the movements of the lower faculties. In full faith in 
the dependence of man on the Holy Spirit for these 
spiritual intuitions, he holds substantially the same 
ground with Jonathan Edwards, though he believes 
that Divine influence to be far more widely, constant- 
ly and fully given to the children of men than did 
that old divine. 

During his two last college years, Mr. Beecher, like 
other members of his class, taught rural schools during 
the long winter vacations. In this way he raised funds 
of his own to buy that peculiar library which his tastes 
and studies caused him to accumulate about him. In 
both these places he performed the work of a religious 
teacher, preaching and exhorting regularly in stated 
meetings, giving temperance lectures, or doing any 
reformatory work that came to hand. In the contro- 
versy then arising through the land in relation to slav- 
ery, Mr. Beecher from the first took the ground and 
was willing to bear the name of an abolitionist. It 
was a part of the heroic element of "his nature always 
to stand for the weak, and he naturally inclined to 
take that stand in a battle where the few were at odds 
against the many. 

In 1832 Dr. Lyman Beecher moved to Cincinnati, 
two years before the completion of Henry's college 
course. * 



534 HEXRY WARD BEE CHER. 

He graduated in 1834, and went out to Cincinnati. 
The abolition excitement at Lane Seminary had just 
ended, by the departure of a whole class of some thirty 
students, with Theodore Weld at their head. 

Dr. Beecher was now the central point of a great 
theological battle. It was a sort of spiritual Armaged- 
don, being the confluence of the forces of the Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterian Calvinistic fatalism, meeting in 
battle with the advancing rationalism of New Eng- 
land new school theology. On one side was hard lit- 
eral interpretation of Bible declarations and the Pres- 
byterian standards, asserting man's utter and absolute 
natural and moral inability to obey God's commands, 
and on the other side, the doctrine of man's free agen- 
cy, and bringing to the rendering of the declarations 
of the scriptures and of the standards, the lights of 
modern modes of interpretation. 

Dr. Wilson, who headed the attacking party, was a 
man in many points marvellously resembling General 
Jackson, both in person and character, and he fought 
the battle with the same gallant, headlong vigor and 
sincere unflinching constancy. His habits of thought 
were those of a western pioneer, accustomed from child- 
hood to battle with Indians and wild beasts, in the 
frontier life of an early state. His views of mental 
philosophy, and of the modes of influencing the human 
mind, were like those of the Emperor Constantine 
when he commanded a whole synod of bishops to 
think alike without a day's delay, or those of the Duke 
of Wellington, when he told the doubting inquirers at 
Oxford, that "the thing to be done was to sign the 
thirty -nine articles, and believe them." The party he 
I 



OLD SCHOOL AND NEW SCHOOL. 535 

headed, were vigorous, powerful and with all that im- 
mense advantage which positive certainty and a lit- 
eral, positively expressed belief always gives. With 
such an army and such a general, the fight of course 
was a warm one, and Dr. Beecher's sons found them- 
selves at once his armor bearers in the thickest of the 
battle. The great number of ascending judicatories 
in the Presbyterian Church gave infinite scope for pro- 
tracting a contest where every point of doctrine could 
first be discussed and voted on in Presbytery, then ad. 
journed to Synod, then carried to General Assembly, 
and in each had to be discussed and decided by majori- 
ties. What scope for activity in those times ! What rac- 
ing and chasing along muddy western roads, to obscure 
towns, each party hoping that the length of the way 
and the depth of the mud would discourage their 
opponents, keep them away and so give their own 
side the majority. Dr. Beecher and his sons, it was 
soon found could race and chase and ride like born 
Kentuckians, and that " free agency" on horse-back, 
would go through mud and fire, and water, as gallant- 
ly as ever " natural inability " could. There was 
something grimly ludicrous in the dismay with which 
Dr. Wilson, inured from his boyhood to bear-fights, and 
to days and nights spent in cane-brakes, and dens of 
wolves, found on his stopping at an obscure log hut in 
the depth of the wilderness, Dr. Beecher with his sons 
and his new school delegates, ahead of him, on their 
way to Synod. 

The study of theology at Lane Seminary, under these 
circumstances, was very largely from the controversial 
and dialectic point of view. It was, to a great extent, 
33 



536 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

the science of defence of new school as against old 
school. 

Mr. Beecher was enthusiastically devoted to his fa- 
ther, and of course felt interested in his success as a per- 
sonal matter, but in regard to the whole wide contro- 
versy, his interest was more that of a spectator than 
of a partizan on either side. He had already begun 
his study of mental and moral philosophy on a broad 
eclectic basis, taking great account of facts and phe- 
nomena which he saw to be wholly ignored by the 
combatants on both sides. The mental philosophy of 
Reid and the Scotch school, on which Dr. Beecher 
based his definitions, he regarded as only partially true, 
and had set down in his own mind at a definite value. 
The intense zeal and perfect undoubting faith with 
which both sides fought their battle, impressed him as 
only a strange and interesting and curious study in his 
favorite science of anthropology. 

He gave his attention to the system, understood it 
thoroughly, was master of all its modes of attack, 
fence and defence, but he did it much as a person now- 
a days might put on a suit of mediaeval armor, and 
study mediaeval tactics. 

Mr. Beecher had inherited from his father what has 
been called a genius for friendship. He was never 
without the anchor of an enthusiastic personal attach- 
ment for somebody, and at Lane Seminary, he formed 
such an intimacy with Professor C. E. Stowe, whose 
room-mate for some length of time he was, and in 
whose society he took great delight. Professor Stowe, 
a man devoted to scholarly learning and Biblical crit- 
icism, was equally with young Beecher standing as a 



PUNCTUALITY FOR JOKE'S SAKE. 537 

spectator in 'the great theological contest which was 
raging around him, and which he surveyed from still 
another stand-point, of ecclesiastical history and bibli- 
cal criticism. It was some considerable inconvenience 
to the scholarly professor, to be pulled up from his 
darling books, and his interjections were not always 
strictly edifying when he was raced through muddy 
lanes, and rattled over corduroy roads, under the vig- 
orous generalship of Dr. Beecher, all that he might 
give his vote for or against some point of doctrine, 
which, in his opinion, common sense had decided ages 
ago. He was also, somewhat of a strict disciplinarian 
and disposed to be severe on the discursive habits of 
his young friend, who was quite too apt to neglect or 
transcend conventional rule. The morning prayers at 
Lane were at conventual hours, and Henry's devotion- 
al propensities, of a dark cold winter morning, were al- 
most impossible to be aroused, while his friend, who 
was punctuality itself, was always up and away in the 
gloaming. One morning, when the Professor had in- 
dignantly rebuked the lazy young Christian, whom he 
left tucked in bed, and, shaking the dust from his 
feet, had departed to his morning duties, Henry took 
advantage of his own habits of alert motion, sprang 
from the bed, dressed himself in a twinkling, and tak- 
ing a cross-lot passage, was found decorously sitting 
directly under the Professor's desk, waiting for him, 
when he entered to conduct prayers. The stare of 
almost frightened amazement with which the Profes- 
sor met him, was the ample reward of his exertions. 
Though Professor Stowe never succeeded in mak- 
ing him an exact linguist, or shaping him into a bibli- 



538 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

cal scholar, yet lie was of great service to him in start- 
ing his mind in a right general direction in the study 
of the Bible. The old and the new school were both 
too much agreed in using the Bible as a carpenter does 
his nail-box, going to it only to find screws and nails 
to hold together the framework of a theological 
system. Professor Stowe inspired him with the idea 
of surveying the books of the Bible as divinely in- 
spired compositions, yet truly and warmly human, 
and to be rendered and interpreted by the same rules 
of reason and common sense which pertain to all human 
documents. 

As the time drew near in which Mr. Beecher was 
to assume the work of the ministry, he was oppressed 
by a deep melancholy. He had the most exalted 
ideas of what ought to be done by a Christian minister. 
He had transferred to that profession all those ideals of 
courage, enterprise, zeal and knightly daring which 
were the dreams of his boyhood, and which he first 
hoped to realize in the naval profession. He felt that 
the holy calling stood high above all others, that to 
enter it from any unholy motive, or to enter and 
not do a worthy work in it, was a treason to all honor. 

His view of the great object of the ministry was 
sincerely and heartily the same with that of his father ; 
to secure the regeneration of the individual heart by 
the Divine spirit, and thereby to effect the regenera- 
tion of human society. The problem that oppressed 
him was, how to do this. His father had used certain 
moral and intellectual weapons, and used them strong- 
ly and effectively, because employing them with un- 
doubting faith. So many other considerations had 



DOUBTS ON ENTERING THE MINISTRY. 539 

come into his mind to qualify and limit that faith, so 
many new modes of thought and inquiry, that were 
partially inconsistent with the received statements of 
his party, that he felt he could never grasp and wield 
them with the force which would make them efficient 
It was no comfort to him that he could wield the weap- 
ons of his theological party, so as to dazzle and con- 
found objectors, while all the time conscious in his own 
soul of objections more profound and perplexities more 
bewildering. Like the shepherd boy of old, he saw 
the giant of sin stalking through the world, defying 
the armies of the living God, and longed to attack him, 
but the armor in which he had been equipped for the 
battle was no help, but only an incumbrance ! 

His brother, who studied with him, had already be- 
come an unbeliever, and thrown up the design of 
preaching, and he could not bear to think of adding 
to his father's trials by deserting the standard. Yet 
his distress and perplexity were so great that at times 
he seriously contemplated going into some other pro- 
fession. 

What to say to make men Christians, — how to raise 
man to God really and truly, — was to him an awful 
question. Nothing short of success in this appeared 
to him success in the Christian ministry. 

Pending these mental conflicts, he performed some 
public labors. He was for four or five months editor 
of the Cincinnati Journal, the organ of the N. S. Pres- 
byterian Church, during the absence of Mr. Brainard. 
While he was holding this post, the pro-slavery riot 
which destroyed Birney's press occurred, and the ed- 
itorials of the young editor at this time were copied 



540 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

with high approval by Charles Hammond, of the Cin- 
cinnati Gazette, undoubtedly the ablest editor of the 
West, and the only other editor who dared to utter a 
word condemnatory of the action of the rioters. Mr. 
Beecher entered on the defence of the persecuted ne- 
groes with all the enthusiasm of his nature. He had 
always a latent martial enthusiasm, and though his 
whole life had been a peaceful one, yet a facility in 
the use of carnal weapons seemed a second nature, 
and at this time, he, with a number of other young 
men went to the mayor and were sworn in as a special 
body of police, who patroled the streets, well armed. 
Mr. Beecher wore his pistol, and was determined, should 
occasion arise, to use it. But as usual in such cases, a 
resolute front once shown dissolved the mob entirely. 
In his last theological term he took a Bible class in 
the city of Cincinnati, and began studying and teach- 
ing the evangelists. With the course of this study 
and teaching came a period of spiritual clairvoyance. 
His mental perplexities were relieved, and the great 
question of "what to preach," was solved. The shep- 
herd boy laid aside his cumbrous armor, and found 
in a clear brook a simple stone that smote down the 
giant, and so from the clear waters of the gospel nar- 
rative, Mr. Beecher drew forth that "white stone with 
a new name," which was to be the talisman of his 
ministry. To present Jesus Christ, personally, as the 
Friend and Helper of Humanity, Christ as God im- 
personate, eternally and by a necessity of his nature 
helpful and remedial and restorative ; the friend of 
each individual soul, and thus the friend of all society ; 
this was the one thing which his soul rested on as a 



SETTLEMENT AT LAWRENCEBURG. 541 

worthy object in entering the ministry. He afterward 
said, in speaking of his feelings at this time : "I was 
like the man in the story to whom a fairy gave a 
purse with a single piece of money in it, which he 
found always came again as soon as he had spent it. 
I thought I knew at last one thing to preach, I found 
it included everything." 

Immediately on finishing his theological course, Mr. 
Beecher married and was settled in Lawrenceburg. 
He made short work of the question of settlement, 
accepting the very first offer that was made him. It 
was work that he wanted, and one place he thought 
about as good as another. His parish was a little town 
on the Ohio river, not far from Cincinnati. Here he 
preached in a small church, and did all the work of 
the parish sexton, making his fires, trimming his lamps, 
sweeping his house, and ringing his bell. "I did all," 
he said whimsically, "but come to hear myself preach 
— that they had to do." The little western villages 
of those days had none of the attractions of New 
England rural life. They were more like the back 
suburbs of a great city, a street of houses without 
yards or gardens, run up for the most part in a cheap 
and flimsy manner, and the whole air of society mark- 
ed with the impress of a population who have no local 
attachments, and are making a mere temporary sojourn 
for money-getting purposes. Mr. Beecher was soon 
invited from Lawrenceburg to Indianapolis, the capital 
of the State, where he labored for eight years. 

His life here was of an Arcadian simplicity. He 
inhabited a cottage on the outskirts of the town, where 
he cultivated a garden, and gathered around him 



542 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

horse, cow and pig ; all that wholesome suite of do- 
mestic animals which he had been accustomed to care 
for in early life. He was an enthusiast on all these 
matters, fastidious about breeds and blood, and each 
domestic animal was a pet and received his own per- 
sonal attentions. In the note-books of this period, 
amid hints for sermons, come memoranda respecting 
his favorite Berkshire pig, or Durham cow. He read 
on gardening, farming, and stock-raising, all that he 
could lay hands on ; he imported from eastern culti- 
vators all sorts of roses and all sorts of pear trees and 
grape vines, and edited a horticultural paper, which 
had quite a circulation. 

All this was mainly the amusement of his leisure 
hours, as he preached always twice on Sunday, and 
held at an average five other meetings a week in dif- 
ferent districts of the city. For three months of every 
year, by consent of his people, he devoted himself to 
missionary duty through the State, riding from point 
to point on horseback, and preaching every day of 
the week. 

In his theological studies he had but just two vol- 
umes — the Bible and human nature, which he held to 
be indispensable to the understanding each of the 
other. He said to himself, "The Apostles who first 
preached Christ, made converts who were willing to 
dare or do anything for him. How did they do this?" 
He studied all the recorded discourses of the Apostles 
in the book of Acts, in his analytical method, asking, 
to what principles of human nature did they appeal ? 
What were their methods of statement ? He endeav- 
ored to compose sermons on similar principles, and 



HIS STUDIES FIRST REVIVAL. 543 

test them by their effects on men. He noticed that 
the Apostles always based their appeals to men on 
some common truth, admitted by both parties alike ; 
that they struck at the great facts of moral conscious- 
ness, and he imitated them in this. He was an intense 
observer and student of men as they are. His large 
social talent, his predominating play of humor and 
drollery, were the shields under which he was con- 
stantly carrying on his inquiries into what man is, and 
how he can be reached. Seated in the places where 
men congregate to loaf and talk, he read his newspa- 
per with his eyes and ears open to more than its pages. 
His preaching began to draw listeners as a new style 
of thing. Its studies into human nature, its searching 
analysis of men and their ways, drew constant listen- 
ers. His fame spread through the country, and mul- 
titudes, wherever he went, flocked to hear him. Still, 
Mr. Beecher did not satisfy himself. To be a popular 
preacher, to be well spoken of, to fill up his church, 
did not after all satisfy his ideal. It was necessary 
that the signs of an Apostle should be wrought in him 
by his having the powsr given to work the great, deep 
and permanent change which unites the soul to God. 
It was not till about the third year of his ministry that 
he found this satisfaction in a great revival of religion 
in Terre Haute, which was followed by a series of 
such revivals through the State, in which he was for 
many months unceasingly active. When he began to 
see whole communities moving together under a 
spiritual impulse, the grog-shops abandoned, the 
votaries of drunkenness, gambling and dissipation re- 
claimed, reformed, and sitting at the feet of Jesus, 



544 HENRY WARD BEECHEP 

clothed and in their right mind, he felt that at last he 
had attained what his soul thirsted for, and that he 
could enter into the joy of the Apostles when they 
returned to Jesus, saying, "Lord, by thy name even 
the devils were made subject unto us." 

His preaching of Christ at this time was spoken of 
as something very striking in its ceaseless iteration of 
one theme, made constantly new and various by new 
applications to human want and sin and sorrow. 

A member of his church in Indianapolis, recently, 
in writing the history of the church with which he 
was connected, thus gives his recollections of him : 

"In the early spring of 1842, a revival began, more 
noticeable, perhaps, than any that this church or this 
community has seen. The whole town was pervaded 
by the influences of religion. For many weeks the 
work continued with unabated power, and at three 
communion seasons, held successively in February, 
March and April, 1842, nearly one hundred persons 
were added to the church on profession of their faith. 
This was God's work. It is not improper, however, 
to speak of the pastor in that revival, as he is remem- 
bered by some of the congregation, plunging through 
the wet streets, his trousers stuffed in his muddy boot- 
legs, earnest, untiring, swift ; with a merry heart, a 
glowing face, and a helpful word for every one ; the 
whole day preaching Christ to the people where he 
could find them, and at night preaching still where 
the people were sure to find him. It is true that in 
this revival some wood and hay and stubble were 
gathered with the gold and silver and precious stones. 
As in all new communities, there was special danger 



LARGE ACCESSIONS TO THE CHURCH. 545 

of unhealthy excitement. But in general the results 
were most happy for the church and for the town. 
Some of those who have been pillars since, found the 
Saviour in that memorable time. Nor was the awak- 
ening succeeded by an immediate relapse. 

"Early in the following year, at the March and 
April communions, the church had large accessions, 
and it had also in 1845. There was, indeed, a whole- 
some and nearly continuous growth up to the time 
when the first pastor resigned, to accept a call to the 
Plymouth Congregational church, in Brooklyn, New 
York. This occurred August 24th, 1847, and on the 
nineteenth of the following month Mr. Beecher's la- 
bors for the congregation ceased. 

" The pastorate, thus terminated, had extended 
through more than eight years. During this time 
much had been accomplished. The society had built 
a pleasant house of worship. The membership had 
advanced from thirty-two to two hundred and seventy- 
five. What was considered a doubtful enterprise, 
inaugurated as it had been amidst many prophecies of 
failure, had risen to an enviable position, not only in 
the capital but in the State. The attachment between 
pastor and people had become peculiarly strong. 
Mutual toils and sufferings and successes had bound 
them fast together. Only the demands of a wider 
field, making duty plain, divided them, and a recent 
letter proves that the pastor's early charge still keeps 
its hold upon his heart. It is not to be wondered at 
that the few of his flock who yet remain among us 
always speak of 'Henry' with beaming eyes and mel- 
lowed voices." 



546 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

One expression in this extract will show a peculiar- 
ity which strongly recalls the artless, unconventional 
freshness of Western life in those days. The young 
pastor, though deeply and truly respected by all his 
elders and church members, was always addressed as 
u Henry," by them with a sort of family intimacy and 
familiarity. It was partly due to the simple, half 
woodland habits of the people, and partly to that 
quality in the pastor that made every elderly man 
love him as a son and every younger one as a brother. 

Henry's tastes, enthusiasms, and fancies, his darling 
garden, with its prize vegetables and choice roses, 
whence came bouquets for the aesthetic, and more 
solid presents of prize onions or squashes for the more 
literal — all these seemed to be part and parcel of the 
family stock of his church. His brother Charles, who 
from intellectual difficulties had abandoned the minis- 
try, and devoted himself to a musical life as a profes- 
sion, inhabited, with his wife and young family, a little 
cottage in the same grounds with his own, and shared 
his garden labors, and led the music of his church. 
"Henry and Charles " were as familiarly spoken of and 
known in Indianapolis circles as Castor and Pollux 
among the astronomers. In one of the revivals in 
Indianapolis, Charles, like his brother before him, 
found in an uplift of his moral faculties a tide to carry 
him over the sunken rocks of his logic. By his broth- 
er's advice, he took a Bible class, and began the story 
of the life of Christ, and the result was that after a 
while he saw his way clear to offer himself for ordina- 
tion, and was settled in the ministry in Fort Wayne, 
Indiana. Thus that simple narrative had power to 



"tropical style." 547 

allay the speculative doubts of both brothers, and to 
give them an opening into the ministry. 

Mr. Beecher has always looked back with peculiar 
tenderness to that Western life, in the glow of his 
youthful days, and in that glorious, rich, abundant, 
unworn Western country. The West, with its wide, 
rich, exuberant spaces of land, its rolling prairies, 
garlanded with rainbows of ever-springing flowers, 
teeming with abundance of food for man, and opening 
in every direction avenues for youthful enterprise and 
hope, was to him a morning land. To carry Christ's 
spotless banner in high triumph through such a land, 
was a thing worth living for, and as he rode on horse- 
back alone, from day to day, along the rolling prairie 
lands, sometimes up to his horse's head in grass and 
waving flowers, he felt himself kindled with a sort of 
ecstacy. The prairies rolled and blossomed in his 
sermons, and his style at this time had a tangled lux- 
uriance of poetic imagery, a rush and abundance of 
words, a sort of rich and heavy involution, that resem- 
bled the growth of a tropical forest. 

"What sort of a style am I forming?" he said to a 
critical friend, who had come to hear him preach. 

"Well, I should call it the 'tropical style,'" was 
the reply. 

The Western people, simple and strong, shrewd as 
Yankees, and excitable and fervent as Southerners, 
full of quaint images and peculiar turns of expression 
derived from a recent experience of back- woods life, 
were an open page in his great book of human na- 
ture, where character revealed itself with an artless 
freshness. All the habits of society had an unconven- 



548 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

tional simplicity. People met with the salutation, 
"How are ye, stranger? " and had no thought of any 
formal law of society, why one human being might 
not address another on equal terms, and speak out his 
mind on all subjects fully. When invited to supper 
at a thrifty farmer's, the supper board was spread in 
the best bed-room, the master and mistress stood be- 
hind the chairs of their guests and waited on them 
during the meal, and the table groaned with such an 
abundance of provision as an eastern imagination 
fails to conceive of. Every kind of fowl, choicely 
cooked, noble hams, sausages, cheese, bread, butter, 
biscuit, corn cakes in every variety, sweet cakes and 
confections, preserved fruits of every name, with 
steaming tea and coffee, were all indispensable to a 
good supper. 

Of poverty, properly so called, there was very little. 
There were none of those distressing, unsolvable so- 
cial problems which perplex the mind and burden the 
heart of a pastor in older states of society. 

Mr. Beecher's ecclesiastical brethren were compan- 
ions of whom he never fails to speak with tender re- 
spect and enthusiastic regard. Some of them, like 
Father Dickey, were men who approached as near the 
apostolic ideal, in poverty, simplicity, childlike sincer- 
ity, and unconquerable, persevering labor, as it is 
possible to do. They were all strong, fearless anti- 
slavery men, and the resolutions of the Indiana Synod 
were always a loud, unsparing and never-failing testi- 
mony against any complicity with slavery in the Pres- 
byterian church. 



MINISTERIAL JOKES. 549 

As to the great theological controversy that divided 
the old and new school church, Mr. Beecher dropped 
it at once and forthwith, being in his whole nature 
essentially uncontroversial. It came to pass that some 
of his warmest personal friends were members of the 
Old School church in Indianapolis, andoffspring of the 
very fiercest combatants who had fought his father in 
Cincinnati. 

Mr. Beecher was on terms of good fellowship with 
all denominations. There were in Indianapolis, Bap- 
tists, Methodists, and an Episcopal minister, but he 
stood on kindly social terms with all. The spirit of 
Western society was liberal, and it was deemed edifying 
by the common sense masses that the clergy of different 
denominations should meet as equals and brothers. 
Mr. Beecher's humorous faculty gave to him a sort of 
universal coin which passed current in all sorts of cir- 
cles, making every one at ease with him. Human 
nature longs to laugh, and a laugh, as Shakspeare 
says, "done in the testimony of a good conscience," 
will often do more to bring together wrangling theo- 
logians than a controversy. 

There was a store in Indianapolis, where the minis- 
ters of all denominations often dropped in to hear 
the news, and where, the free western nature made it 
always in rule to try each others metal with a joke. 
Nq matter how sharp the joke, it was considered to 
be all fair and friendly. 

On one occasion, Mr. Beecher, riding to one of the 
stations of his mission, was thrown over his horse's 
head in crossing the Miami, pitched into the water, 
and crept out thoroughly immersed. The incident of 



550 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

course furnished occasion for talk in the circles the 
next day, and his good friend the Baptist minister 
proceeded to attack him the moment he made his 
appearance. 

"Oh, ho, Beecher, glad to see you ! I thought you'd 
have to come into our ways at last ! You've been im- 
mersed at last; you are as good as any of us now." A 
general laugh followed this sally. 

" Poh, poh," was the ready response, "my immer- 
sion was a different thing from that of your converts. 
You see, I was immersed by a horse, not by an ass." 

A chorus of laughter proclaimed that Beecher had 
got the better of the joke for this time. 

A Methodist brother once said to him, " Well now, 
really, Brother Beecher, what have you against Meth- 
odist doctrines ? " 

"Nothing, only that your converts will practice 
them." 

"Practice them?" 

"Yes, you preach falling from grace, and your con- 
verts practice it with a vengeance." 

One morning as he was sitting at table, word was 
brought in that his friend, the Episcopal minister, was 
at the gate, wanting to borrow his horse. 

" Stop, stop," said he, w x ith a face of great gravity, 
"there's something to be attended to first," and rising 
from table, he ran out to him and took his arm with the 
air of a man who is about to make a serious proposition. 

" Now brother G — , you want my horse for a day? 
Well, you see, it lies on my mind greatly that you don't 
admit my ordination. I don't think it's fair. Now if 
you'll admit that I'm a genuinely ordained minister, 



SLAVERY IN THE PULPIT. 551 

you shall have my horse, but if not, I don't know 
about it." 

Mr. Beecher took ground from the first that the 
pulpit is the place not only for the presentation of 
those views which tend to unite man's spiritual nature 
directly with God, but also for the consideration of all 
those specific reforms which grow out of the doctrine 
of Christ in society. He preached openly and boldly 
on specific sins prevailing in society, and dangerous 
practices which he thought would corrupt or injure. 

There was a strong feeling in Indianapolis against 
introducing slavery into the discussions of the pulpit. 
Some of his principal men had made vehement dec- 
larations that the subject never should be named in 
the pulpit of any church with which they were con- 
nected. Mr. Beecher, among his earliest motions in 
Synod, however, introduced a resolution that every 
minister should preach a thorough exposition and con- 
demnation of slavery. He fulfilled his part very char- 
acteristically, by preaching three sermons on the life 
of Moses, the bondage of the children of Israel under 
Pharaoh and their deliverance. Under this cover he 
gained the ear of the people, for it has always been 
held both orthodox and edifying to bombard the vices 
and crimes of old Testament sinners, and to show no 
mercy to their iniquities. Before they were aware of 
it however, his hearers found themselves listening to a 
hot and heavy attack on the existing system of Amer- 
ican slavery, which he exposed in a most thorough, 
searching manner, and although the oppressor was 
called Pharaoh and the scene was Egypt, and so 
34 



552 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

nobody could find fault with the matter of the dis- 
course, the end and aim was very manifest. 

Nobody was offended, but many were convinced, 
and from that time, Mr. Beecher preached Anti-Sla- 
very sermons in his church just as often as he thought 
best, and his church became an efficient bulwark of 
the cause. 

The Western states at this time were the scenes of 
much open vice. Gambling, drinking, licentiousness 
were all rife in the community, and against each of 
these, Mr. Beecher lifted up his testimony. A course 
of sermons on those subjects preached in Indianapolis 
and afterwards published under the title of " Lectures 
to Young Men," excited in the day of their delivery a 
great sensation. The style is that of fervid, almost trop- 
ical fullness, which characterized his Western life. It 
differs from the sermons of most clergymen to young 
men, in that free and perfect knowledge it shows of all 
the details of the evil ways which he names. Mr. 
Beecher's peculiar social talent, his convivial powers, 
and his habits of close Shaksperian observation, gave 
him the key of human nature. Many a gambler or 
drunkard, in their better hours were attracted towards 
a man who met them as a brother, and seemed to value 
and aim for the better parts of their nature. When 
Mr. Beecher left Indianapolis some of his most touch- 
ing interviews and parting gifts were from men of this 
class, whom he had followed in their wanderings and 
tried to save. Some he could save and some were too 
far in the whirlpool for his arm to pull them out. One 
of them said when he heard of his leaving, " Before 



THE TRANSFER TO BROOKLYN. 553 

any thing or any body on earth, I do love Beecher. 
I know he would have saved me if he could." 

Mr. Beecher was so devoted to the West, and so 
identified with it, that he never would have left what 
he was wont to call his bishopric of Indiana, for the 
older and more set and conventional circles of New 
York, had not the health of his family made a removal 
indispensable. 

He was invited to Brooklyn to take charge of a 
new enterprise. Plymouth Church was founded by 
some fifteen or twenty gentlemen as a new Congrega- 
tional Church. 

Mr. Beecher was to be installed there and had to 
pass an examination before Eastern theologians. He 
had been, as has been shown, not a bit of a controver- 
sialist, and he had been so busy preaching Christ, and 
trying to save sinners, that he was rather rusty in all 
the little ins and outs of New England theology. On 
many points he was forced to answer " I do not know," 
and sometimes his answer had a whimsical turn that 
drew a smile. 

" Do you believe in the Perseverance of the Saints ?" 
said good Dr. Humphrey, his college father, who 
thought his son was not doing himself much credit in 
the theological line, and hoped to put a question where 
he could not fail to answer right. 

" I was brought up to believe that doctrine," said 
Mr. Beecher, " and I did believe it till I went out West 
and saw how Eastern Christians lived when they went 
out there. I confess since then I have had my doubts." 

On the whole, as Mr. Beecher's record was clear from 
the testimony of Western brothers, with whom he had 



554 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

been in labors more abundant, it was thought not on 
the whole dangerous to let him into the eastern sheep- 
fold. 

Mr. Beecher immediately announced in Plymouth 
Pulpit the same principles that he had in Indianapolis; 
namely, his determination to preach Christ among them 
not as an absolute system of doctrines, not as a by- 
gone historical personage, but as the living Lord and 
God, and to bring all the ways and usages of society 
to the test of his standards. He announced to all 
whom it might concern, that he considered temperance 
and anti-slavery a part of the gospel of Christ, and 
should preach them accordingly. 

During the battle inaugurated by Mr. Webster's 
speech of the 7th of March, and the fugitive slave 
law, Mr. Beecher labored with his whole soul. 

There was, as people will remember, a great Union 
Saving Committee at Castle Garden, New York, and 
black lists were made out of merchants, who, if they 
did not give up their principles, were to be crushed 
financially, and many were afraid. Mr. Beecher 
preached, and visited from store to store, holding up 
the courage of his people to resistance. The adver- 
tisement of Bo wen & McNamee that they would "sell 
their silks but not their principles," went all through 
the country, and as every heroic sentiment does, 
brought back an instant response. 

At this time Mr. Beecher carried this subject through 
New England and New York, in Lyceum lectures, and 
began a course of articles in the Independent, under 
the star signature, which were widely read. It is said 
that when Calhoun was in his last illness, his secretary 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH PREACHING. 555 

was reading him extracts from Northern papers, and 
among others, one of Mr. Beecher's, entitled "Shall we 
compromise ? " in which he fully set forth the utter 
impossibility of reconciling the two conflicting powers 
of freedom and slavery. 

"Read that again ! " said the old statesman, his eye 
lighting up. " That fellow understands his subject; he 
has gone to the bottom of it." Calhoun as well as 
Garrison understood the utter impossibility of uniting 
in one nation two states of society founded on exactly 
opposite social principles. 

Through all the warfare of principles, Plymouth 
Church steadily grew larger. It was an enterprise 
dependent for support entirely on the sale of the seats, 
and Mr. Beecher was particularly solicitous to make it 
understood that the buying of a seat in Plymouth 
Church would necessitate the holder to hear the gos- 
pel of Christ unflinchingly applied to the practical 
issues of the present hour. Always, as the year came 
round, when the resting of the pews approached, Mr. 
Beecher took occasion to preach a sermon in which he 
swept the whole field of modern reform with particu- 
lar reference to every disputed and unpopular doc- 
trine, and warned all who were thinking of taking their 
seats what they must expect for the coming year. 

When the battle of the settlement of Kansas was 
going on, and the East was sending forth her colonies 
as lambs among wolves, Mr. Beecher fearlessly advo- 
cated the necessity of their going out armed, and a 
subscription was raised in Plymouth Church to sup- 
ply every family with a Bible and a rifle. A great 
commotion was then raised and the inconsistency of 



556 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

such a gift from a professedly Christian church was 
much insisted on. Since then, more than one church 
in New England has fitted out soldiers and prepared 
munitions of war, and more than one clergyman has 
preached warlike sermons. The great battle had even 
then begun in Kansas. John Brown was our first 
great commander, who fought single handed for his 
country, when traitors held Washington and used the 
United States army only as a means to crush and 
persecute her free citizens and help on the slavery con- 
spiracy. During the war Mr. Beecher's labors were 
incessant. Plymouth Church took the charge of rais- 
ing and equipping one regiment, the First Long Island, 
and many of its young men went out in it. Mr. 
Beecher often visited their camp during the time of 
their organization and preached to them. His eldest 
son was an officer in it, and was afterwards transferred 
from it to the artillery service of the regular army. 

At this time Mr. Beecher took the editorship of 
the Independent, a paper in which he had long been 
a contributor. He wished this chance to speak from 
time to time his views and opinions to the whole coun- 
try. He was in constant communication with Wash- 
ington and intimate with the Secretary of War, in 
whose patriotism, sagacity and wonderful efficiency he 
had the greatest reliance. 

The burden of the war upon his spirit, his multi- 
plied labors in writing, speaking, editorship, and 
above all in caring for his country, bore down his 
health. His voice began to fail, and he went to Europe 
for a temporary respite. On his arrival he was met 
on the steamer by parties who wished to make arrange- 



VISIT TO ENGLAND. 557 

ments for his speaking in England. He told them 
that he had come with no such intention, but wholly 
for purposes of relaxation, and that he must entirely 
decline speaking in England. 

In a private letter to his sister at this time, he said, 
" This contest is neither more nor less than the con- 
flict between democratic and aristocratic institutions, 
in which success to one must be defeat to the other. 
The aristocratic party in England, see this plainly 
enough, and I do not propose to endeavor to pull the 
wool over their eyes. I do not expect sympathy from 
them. No order yet ever had any sympathy with what 
must prove their own downfall. We have got to set- 
tle this question by our armies and the opinions of 
mankind will follow." 

He spent but a short time in England, enjoying the 
hospitality of an American friend and former parish- 
ioner, Mr. C. C. Duncan. After a fortnight spent in 
Wales, he went into Switzerland through Northern 
Italy and Germany. 

Mr. Beecher always had side tracks to his mind, on 
which his thoughts and interests ran in the intervals 
of graver duties. When he came to the life of a city, 
and left his beloved garden and the blooming prairies 
of the West -behind, he began the study of the arts as 
a recreation, and prosecuted it, as he did every thing 
else, with that enthusiasm which is the parent of indus- 
try. He bought for himself quite an art library, con- 
sisting of all the standard English works on the sub- 
ject, and while up and down the country on his anti- 
slavery lyceum crusade, usually traveled with some of 
these works in his pocket, and read them in the cars. 



558 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

He also made collections of pictures and choice engrav- 
ings, with all the ardor with which before he collected 
specimen roses. At intervals he had lectured on these 
subjects. His lecture on the Uses of the Beautiful, 
was much called for throughout the country. He was 
therefore in training to enjoy the art treasures of 
Europe. 

He had a period of great enjoyment at Berlin, where, 
in the Berlin Museum, under the instructionsof Waagen 
the director of arts, he examined that historical col- 
lection, said to be the richest and most scientifically 
arranged series to mark the history of art which can 
be found in Europe. The scenery of Switzerland and 
the art galleries of Northern Italy also helped to re- 
fresh his mind and divert him from the great national 
affliction that weighed on his spirit. 

At Paris, he met the news of the battle of Gettys- 
burg and the taking of Vicksburg, and recognized in 
them the only style of argument which could carry 
the cause through Europe. Grant was a logician after 
his own heart. 

Mr. Beecher, on his return to England, was again 
solicited to speak in public, and again declined. So 
immutable was his idea that this was a battle that 
Americans must fight out, and which could not be 
talked out. 

He was at last, however, made to see his duty to 
that small staunch liberal party who had been main- 
taining the cause of America against heavy odds in 
England, and he felt that if they wished him to speak, 
he ow ed himself to them ; that they were brave 
defenders hard beset ; and that their cause and ours 



SPEECHES IN ENGLAND. 559 

was one. Such men as Baptist Noel, Newman Hall, 
Francis Newman and others of that class, were appli- 
cants not to be resisted. 

He therefore prepared himself for what he always 
has felt to have been the greatest effort and severest 
labor of his life, to plead the cause of his country at 
the bar of the civilized world. A series of engagements 
was formed for him to speak in the principal cities of 
England and Scotland. 

He opened Friday, October 9th, in the Free Trade 
Hall, in Manchester, to a crowded audience of 6,000 
people. The emissaries of the South had made every 
preparation to excite popular tumult, to drown his 
voice and prevent his being heard. Here he treated 
the subject on its merits, as being the great question 
of the rights of working men, and brought out and 
exposed the nature of the Southern confederacy as 
founded in the right of the superior to oppress the 
inferior race. Notwithstanding the roar and fury and 
interruptions he persevered and said his say, and 
the London Times next day, printed it all with a 
column or two of abuse by way of condiment. 

October 13th, he spoke in the city hall at Glasgow, 
discussing slavery and free labor as comparative sys- 
tems. The next day, October 14th, he spoke in Edin- 
burgh in a great public meeting in the Free Church 
Assembly Hall, where he discussed the existing Amer- 
ican conflict from the historical point of view. 

This was by far the most quiet and uninterrupted 
meeting of any. But the greatest struggle of all was 
of course at Liverpool. At Liverpool, where Clark- 
son was mobbed, and came near being thrown off the 



560 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

wharf and drowned, there was still an abundance of 
that brutal noisy population which slavery always finds 
it useful to stir up to bay and bark when she is 
attacked. 

Mr. Beecher has a firmly knit vigorous physical frame, 
come down from back generations of yeomen, re- 
nowned for strength, and it stood him in good service 
now. In giving an account afterwards, he said, " I 
had to speak extempore on subjects the most delicate 
and difficult as between our two nations, where even the 
shading of my words was of importance, and yet I 
had to outscream a mob and drown the roar of a mul- 
titude. It was like driving a team of runaway horses 
and making love to a lady at the same time." 

The printed record of this speech, as it came from 
England, has constant parentheses of wild uproars, 
hootings, howls, cat calls, clamorous denials and inter- 
ruptions; but by cheerfulness, perfect fearless good 
humor, intense perseverance, and a powerful voice, 
Mr. Beecher said all he had to say in spite of the up- 
roar. 

Two letters, written about this time, show the state 
of his mind during this emergency : 

Sunday, Oct. 18, 1863. London. 

My Dear Friend: 

You know why I have not written you from 
England. I have been so full of work that I could 
not. God has been with me and prospered me. I 
have had health, and strength, and courage, and what 
is of unspeakably more importance, I have had the. 
sweetest experience of love to God and to man, of all 
my life. I have been enabled to love our enemies. 



LETTERS 'FROM ENGLAND. 561 

All the needless ignorance, the party perversions, the 
wilful misrepresentations of many newspapers, the 
arrogance and obstinacy too often experienced, and 
yet more the coolness of brethren of our faith and 
order, and the poisoned prejudices that have been 
arrayed against me by the propagation of untruths or 
distorted reports, have not prevented my having a 
love for old England, an appreciation of the good that 
is here, and a hearty desire for her whole welfare. 
This I count a great blessing. God awakened in 
my breast a desire to be a full and true Christian 
towards England, the moment I put my foot on her 
shores, and he has answered the prayers which he in- 
spired. I have spoken at Manchester, Glasgow, Edin- 
burgh, and Liverpool, and am now in London, prepar- 
ing for Exeter Hall, Tuesday next. I have been 
buoyant and happy. The streets of Manchester and 
Liverpool have been filled with placards, in black and 
white letters, full of all lies and bitterness, but they 
have seemed to me only the tracery of dreams. For 
hours I have striven to speak amid interruptions of 
every kind — yellings, hootings, cat calls, derisive yells, 
impertinent and insulting questions, and every con- 
ceivable annoyance — some personal violence. But 
God has kept me in perfect peace. I stood in Liver- 
pool and looked on the demoniac scene, almost with- 
out a thought that it was me that was present. It 
seemed rather like a storm raging in the trees of the 
forests, that roared and impeded my progress, but yet 
had matters personal or wilful in it, against me. You 
know, dear friend, how, when we are lifted by the 
inspiration of a great subject, and by the almost visi- 



562 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

ble presence and vivid sympathy with Christ, the mind 
forgets the sediment and dregs of trouble, and sails 
serenely in an upper realm of peace, as untouched by 
the noise below, as is a bird that flies across a battle- 
field. Just so I had at Liverpool and Glasgow, as 
sweet an inward peace as ever I did in the loving- 
meetings of dear old Plymouth Church. And again 
and again, when the uproar raged, and I could not 
speak, my heart seemed to be taking of the infinite 
fullness of the Saviour's pity, and breathing it out upon 
those poor, troubled men. I never had so much the 
spirit of continuing and unconscious prayer, or rather, 
of communion with Christ. I felt that I was his dear 
child, and that his arms were about me continually, 
and at times that peace that passeth all understanding- 
has descended upon me that I could not keep tears of 
gratitude from falling for so much tender goodness of 
my God. For what are outward prosperities com- 
pared with these interior intimacies of God ? It is 
not the path to the temple, but the interior of the 
temple that shows the goodness and glory of God. 
And I have been able to commit all to him, myself, 
my family, my friends, and in an especial manner the 
cause of my country. Oh, my friend, I have felt an 
inexpressible wonder that God should give it to me to 
do something for the dear land. When sometimes the 
idea of being clothed with power to stand up in this 
great kingdom, against an inconceivable violence of 
prejudice and mistake, and clear the name of my dis- 
honored country, and let her brow shine forth, crown- 
ed with liberty, glowing with love to man, 0, I have 



CHRISTIAN VIEW OF ENGLAND. 5G3 

seemed unable to live, almost. It almost took my 
breath away ! 

" I have not in a single instance gone to the speaking 
halls without all the way breathing to God unutterable 
desires for inspiration, guidance, success ; and I have 
had no disturbance of 'personality. I have been wil- 
ling, yea, with eagerness, to be myself contemptible 
in men's sight if only my disgrace might be to the 
honor of that cause which is entrusted to our own 
thrice dear country. I have asked of God nothing 
but this — and this with uninterrupted heart-flow of 
yearning request — "Make me worthy to speak for God 
and man." I never felt my ignorance so painfully, 
nor the great want of moral purity and nobility of 
soul, as when approaching my tasks of defending lib- 
erty in this her hour of trial. I have an ideal of what 
a man should be that labors for such a cause, that 
constantly rebukes my real condition, and makes me 
feel painfully how little I am. Yet that is hardly 
painful. There passes before me a view of God's 
glory, so pure, so serene, uplifted, filling the ages, and 
more and more to be revealed, that I almost wish to 
lose my own identity, to be like a drop of dew that 
falls into the sea, and becomes a part of the sublime 
whole that glows under every line of latitude, and 
sounds on every shore ! 'That God may be all in all? 
— that is not a prayer only, but a personal experience. 
And in all this time I have not had one unkind feeling 
toward a single human being. Even those who are 
opposers, I have pitied with undying compassion, and 
enemies around me have seemed harmless, and objects 
of charity rather than potent foes to be destroyed. 



564 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

God be thanked, who giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ. 

" My dear friend, when I sat down to write, I did it 
under this impulse — that I wanted somebody to know 
the secret of my life. I am in a noisy spectacle, and 
seem to thousands as one employing merely worldly 
implements, and acting under secular motives. But 
should I die, on sea or land, I wanted to say to you, 
who have been so near and dear to me, that as God's 
own very truth, ' the life that I have lived in the flesh, 
I have lived by faith of the Son of God.' I wanted 
to leave it with some one to say for me that it was not 
in natural gifts, nor in great opportunities, nor in per- 
sonal ambition, that I have been able to endure and 
labor, but that the secret and spring of my outward 
life has been an inward, complete, and all-possessing 
faith of God's truth, and God's own self working in 
me to will and to do of his own good pleasure ! 

"There, now I feel better! 

"Monday, 19th. I do not know as you will under- 
stand the feeling which led to the above outburst. I 
had spoken four times in seven days to immense audi- 
ences, under great excitement, and with every effort 
of Southern sympathizers, the newspapers, street pla- 
cards, and in every other way to prevent my being 
heard. I thought I had been through furnaces be- 
fore, but this ordeal surpassed all others. I was quite 
alone in England. I had no one to consult with. I 
felt the burden of having to stand for my country, in 
a half hostile land ; and yet I never flinched for a mo- 
ment, nor lost heart. But after resting twenty weeks, 
to begin so suddenly such a tremendous strain upon 



THE EXETER HALL SPEECH. 565 

my voice, has very much affected it. To-day I am 
somewhat fearful I shall be unable to speak to-morrow 
night in Exeter Hall. I want to speak there, if the 
Lord will only let me. I shall be willing to give up 
all the other openings in the kingdom. I cannot stop 
to give you any sort of insight into affairs here. One 
more good victory, and England will be immovable. 
The best thinkers of England will be at any rate. 

"I hope my people will feel that I have done my 
duty. I know that I have tried. I should be glad to 
feel that my countrymen approved, but above all 
others I should prize the knowledge that the people 
of Plymouth Church were satisfied with me. 
"I am as ever, yours, 

H. W. Beecher." 

"Oct. 21, 1863. London. 
"My Dear Friend: 

Last night was the culmination of my labor, in 
Exeter Hall. It was a very fit close to a series of 
meetings that have produced a great sensation in 
England. Even an American would be impressed 
with the enthusiasm of so much of England as the 
people of last night represented for the North. It 
was more than willing, than hearty, than even eager, 
it was almost wild and fanatical. I was like to have 
been killed with people pressing to shake my hand ; 
men, women, and children crowded up the platform, 
and ten and twenty hands held over and stuck through 
like so many pronged spears. I was shaken, pinched, 
squeezed, in every way an affectionate enthusiasm 
could devise, until the police actually came to my 



566 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

rescue, and forced a way, and dragged me down into 
the retiring room, where a like scene began, from 
which an inner room gave me refuge, but no relief, for 
only with more deliberation, the gentlemen brought 
wives, daughters, sons, and selves for a God bless 
you ! And when Englishmen that had lived in Amer- 
ica, or had sons in our army, or had married American 
wives, took me to witness their devotion to our cause, 
the chairman of the meeting, Mr. Scott, the Chamber- 
lain of London, said that a few more meetings, and in 
some other parts of England, and the question would 
be settled ! You will have sent to you abundant ac- 
counts, I presume. 

"Lastly; England will be enthusiastically right, 
provided we hold on, and gain victories. But Eng- 
land has an intense and yearning sense of the value 
of success. 

"Yours, ever lovingly." 

Mr. Beecher returned from England much exhausted 
by the effort. All the strength that he had accumu- 
lated he poured out in that battle. 

Events after that swept on rapidly, and not long 
after Mr. Beecher, in company with Lloyd Garrison, 
and a great party of others, went down to Fort Sum- 
ter to raise again the national flag, when Richmond 
had fallen, and the conflict was over. During his stay 
at the South, he had some exciting experiences. One 
of the most touching was his preaching in one of the 
largest churches in South Carolina to a great congre- 
gation of liberated slaves. The sermon, which is in a 
recently printed volume of sermons, is full of emo- 
tion and records of thankfulness. 



PREACHES AN UNPOPULAR F0RGr7ENESS. 567 

Returning, he was met by the news of the Presi- 
dent's death, at which, like all the land, he bowed as 
a mourner. Not long after, he felt it his duty to strike 
another key in his church. The war was over, the 
victory won. Mr. Beecher came out with a sermon 
on forgiveness of injuries, expounding the present 
crisis as a great and rare opportunity. 

The sermon was not a popular one. The commu- 
nity could not at once change the attitude of war for 
that of peace ; there were heart-burnings that could 
not at once be assuaged. But whatever may be 
thought of Mr. Beecher's opinions in the matter of 
political policy, there is no doubt that the immediate 
and strong impulse to forgive, which came to him at 
once when his party was triumphant, was from that 
source in his higher nature whence have come all the 
best inspirations of his life. 

Mr. Beecher's views, hopes, wishes, and the policy 
he would have wished to have pursued, were very 
similar to those of Governor Andrew, and the more 
moderate of the republicans, and he did not hesitate 
at once to imperil his popularity with his own party, 
by the free expression of his opinions. Those who 
have been most offended by him cannot but feel that 
the man who defied the slaveholder when he was rich, 
haughty and powerful, had a right to speak a kind 
word for him now when he is poor, and weak, and 
defeated. The instinct to defend the weaker side is 
strongest in generous natures. 

Mr. Beecher has met and borne the criticisms of his 
own party with that tolerance and equanimity with 
which he once bore rebuke for defending the cause of 
35 



568 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

the slave. In all the objects sought by the most 
radical republicans, he is a firm believer. He holds 
to the equal political rights of every human being — 
men and women, the white man and the negro. He 
hopes to see this result yet established in the Union, 
and if it be attained by means different from those he 
counseled, still if it he attained, he will sincerely 
rejoice. 

Though Mr. Beecher has from time to time entered 
largely into politics, yet he has always contemplated 
them from the moral and ministerial stand-point. His 
public and political labors, though they have been 
widely known, are mere offshoots from his steady and 
habitual pastoral work in his own parish. 

Plymouth Church is to a considerable degree a real- 
ization externally of Mr. Beecher's ideal of what a prot- 
estant church ought to be — a congregation of faithful 
men and women, bound together by a mutual covenant 
of Christian love, to apply the principles of Christianity 
to society. It has always been per se, a temperance and 
an anti-slavery society. The large revenue raised by 
the yearly sale of pews, has come in time to afford a 
generous yearly income. This year it amounts to fifty 
thousand dollars. This revenue has, besides the pas- 
tor's salary and current expenses, been appropriated 
to extinguishing the debt upon the church, which 
being at last done, the church will devote its surplus 
to missionary operations in its vicinity. Two missions 
have been largely supported by the funds derived 
from Plymouth Church, and the time and personal 
labors of its members. A mechanics' reading-room 
is connected with one of these. No church in the 



PLYMOUTH CHURCH PRAYER-MEETING. 569 

country furnishes a larger body of lay teachers, ex- 
horters, and missionaries in every department of human 
and Christian labor. A large-minded, tolerant, genial 
spirit, a cheerful and buoyant style of piety, is char- 
acteristic of the men and women to whose support 
and efficient aid in religious works, Mr. Beecher is 
largely indebted for his success. 

The weekly prayer-meeting of the church is like 
the reunion of a large family. The pastor, seated in 
the midst, seems only as an elder brother. The vari- 
ous practical questions of Christian morals are freely 
discussed, and every member is invited to express an 
opinion. 

In one of these meetings, Mr. Beecher gave an au- 
tobiographical account of the growth of his own 
mind in religious feeling and opinion, which was taken 
down by a reporter. We shall give it as the fitting 
close of this sketch. 

"If there is any one thing in which I feel that my 
own Christian experience has developed more than in 
another, I think it is the all-sided use of the love and 
worship which I have toward the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Every man's mind, that acts for itself, has to go 
through its periods of development and evolution. 
In the earlier part of my Christian career and minis- 
try, I had but glimpses of Christ, and was eagerly 
seeking to develop in my own mind, and for my peo- 
ple, a full view of his character, particularly with ref- 
erence to the conversion of men ; to start them, in 
other words, in the Christian life. And for a great 
many years I think it was Christ as the wisdom of 
God unto salvation that filled my mind very much ; 



570 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

and I preached Christ as a power, not at all too much, 
perhaps, but almost exclusively. 

"Well, I think there has been going on in me, 
steadily and gradually, a growing appropriation of 
Christ to all needs ; to every side and phase of expe- 
rience ; so that at no period of my life was I ever so 
conscious of a personal need, so definite, and at so 
many points of my nature, as now. I do not know 
that I experience such enthusiasm as I have at some 
former periods of my life; but I think that at no 
other period did I ever have such a sense of the ful- 
ness of God in Christ, or such a sense of the special 
point at which this divine all-supply touches the hu- 
man want. 

"A few points I will mention, that are much in my 
mind. 

"The love of Christ, as I recollect it in my child- 
hood, was taught almost entirely from the work of 
redemption. That work of redemption was itself a 
historical fact, and it was sought to stir up the heart 
and the affections by a continual review and iteration 
of the great facts of Christ's earthly mission, passion, 
atonement and love. I became conscious, very early 
in my ministry, that I did not derive — nor could I see 
that Christians generally derived — from the mere con- 
tinued presentation of that circle of facts, a perpetual 
help, to anything like the extent that life needs. 
There would come to me, as there come to the church, 
times in which all these facts seemed to be fused and 
kindled, and to afford great light and consolation; 
but these were alternative and occasional, whereas the 
need was perpetual. And it was not until I went be- 



THE DIVINE LOVE. 571 

yond these — not disdaining them, but using them 
rather as a torch, as a means of interpreting Christ in 
a higher relation — that I entered into a train of 
thought that revealed to me the intrinsic nature of 
God. I had an idea that he loved me on account of 
Calvary and Gethsemane, on account of certain histor- 
ical facts ; but I came, little by little, through glimps- 
es and occasional appreciations, to that which is now 
a continuous, unbroken certainty, namely, a sense of 

the EVERLASTING NEED OF GOD, IN CHRIST, TO LOVE. 

I began to interpret the meaning of love, not by con- 
templating a few historical facts, but by running 
through my mind human faculties, exalting them, and 
imagining them to have infinite scope in the divine 
mind. I began to apply our ideas of infinity and 
almightiness to the attributes of God, and to form 
some conception of what affection must be in a 
Being who had created, who had sustained in the 
past, and who was to sustain throughout the endless 
future, a race of intelligent creatures such as peopled 
the earth. In that direction my mind grew, and in 
that direction it grows. And from the inward and 
everlasting nature of God to love, I have derived 
the greatest stimulus, the greatest consolation, and the 
greatest comfort in preaching to others. I find many 
persons that speak of loving Christ ; but it is only 
now and then that I meet those who seem to be pene- 
trated deeply with a consciousness of Christ's love 
to them, or of its boundlessness, its wealth, its fine- 
ness, its exceeding delicacy, its transcendency in every 
line and lineament of possible conception. Once in a 
while, people have this view break upon them in 



572 HENRY WARD BEE CHER. 

meeting, or in some sick hour, or in some revival mo- 
ment. That is a blessed visitation which brings to 
the soul a realization of the capacity of God to love 
imperfect beings with infinite love, and which enables 
a man to adapt this truth to his shame-hours, his sor- 
row-hours, his love-hours and his selfish hours, and to 
find all the time that there is in the revelation of the 
love of God in Christ Jesus all-sufficient food for the 
soul. It is, indeed, almost to have the gate of heaven 
opened to you. The treasure is inexhaustible. 

Out of that has grown something besides : for it is 
impossible for me to feel that Christ loves me with 
such an all-surrounding love, and to feel, as I do every 
day of my life, that he has to love me with imper- 
fections, that he never loves me because I am symmet- 
rical, never because I am good, never because I de- 
serve his love, never because I am lovely, but always 
because he has the power of loving erring creatures — 
it is impossible for me to feel thus, and not get some 
insight into divine charity. Being conscious that he 
takes me with all my faults, I cannot but believe that 
he takes others with their faults — Roman Catholics, 
Swedenborgians, Unitarians, Universalists, and Chris- 
tians of all sects and denominations ; and of these, not 
only such as are least exceptionable, but such as are 
narrow-minded, such as are bigoted, such as are pug- 
nacious, such as are unlovely. I believe that Christ 
finds much in them that he loves, but whether he finds 
much in them that he loves or not, he finds much in 
himself of capacity to love them. And so I have the 
feeling that in all churches, in all denominations, there 



OWNING ALL CHRISTIANS. 573 

is an elect, and Christ sees of the travail of his soul, 
and is satisfied. 

That is not all. Aside from this catholicity of love of 
Christians in all sects and denominations, I have a 
sense of ownership in other people. It may seem 
rather fanciful, but it has been a source of abiding 
comfort to me for many years, that I owned everybody 
that was good for anything in life. 

I came here, you know, under peculiar circum- 
stances. I came just at the critical period of the anti- 
slavery movement ; and I came without such endorse- 
ment as is usually considered necessary in city church- 
es in the East. Owing to those independent personal 
habits that belonged to me, and that I acquired from 
my Western training, I never consulted brethren in 
the ministry as to what course I should pursue, but 
carried on my work as fast and as far as I could ac- 
cording to the enlightenment of my conscience. For 
years, as you will recollect, it excited remark, and 
various states of feeling. And so, I felt, always, as 
though I was not particularly acceptable to Christians 
beyond my own flock, with the exception of single 
individuals here and there in other churches. But I 
have felt, not resentful, and hardly regretful ; for I have 
always had a sort of minor under-feeling, that when I 
was at home I was strong and all right, though I was 
conscious that outside of my own affectionate con- 
gregation I was looked upon with suspicion. This 
acting upon a nature proud enough, and sensitive 
enough, has wrought a kind of feeling that I never 
would intrude upon anybody, and never would ask 
any favor of anybody — as I never have had occasion 



574 HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

to do ; and I stood very much by myself. But I never 
felt any bitterness towards those who regarded me with 
disfavor. And I speak the truth, when I declare that 
I do not remember to have had towards any minister 
a feeling that I would have been afraid to have God 
review in the judgment day, and that I do not remem- 
ber to have had towards any church or denomination 
a feeling that Christ would not approve. On the 
other hand, I have had positively and springing from 
my sense of the wonderful love with which I am 
loved, and with which the whole church is loved, the 
feeling that these very men who did not accept me or 
my work, were beloved of Christ, and were brethren 
to me ; and I have said to them mentally, " I am your 
brother. You do not know it, but I am, and though 
you do not own me, I own you. All that is good in 
you is mine, and I am in sympathy with it. And you 
cannot keep me out of your church." I belong to 
the Presbyterian church. I belong to the Methodist 
church. I belong to the Baptist church. I belong 
to the Episcopal church. I belong to any church that 
has Christ in it. I go where he goes, and love what 
he loves. And I insist upon it that though those 
churches exclude me, they cannot keep me out. All 
those I have reason to believe Christ loves, I claim by 
virtue of the love that Christ has for me. Hence, I 
have a great sense of richness. I rejoice in everything 
that is good in all these denominations, and sorrow 
for everything that is bad, or that hinders the work 
of Christ in their hands. And I look, and wait, and 
long for that day when all Christians shall recognize 
each other. 



THE NIGHT RIDE OF LIFE. 575 

I think that people in the church are like persons 
riding in a stage at night. For hours they sit side by- 
side, and shoulder to shoulder, not being able in the 
darkness to distinguish one another ; but at last, when 
day breaks, and they look at each other, behold, they 
discover that they are friends and brothers. 

So we are riding, I think, through the night of this 
earthly state, and do not know that we are brethren, 
though we sit shoulder to shoulder ; but as the mil- 
lennial dawn comes on, we shall find it out and all 
will be clear." 



THE END. 



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ORIGIN JlND HISTORY OF THE 

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BOTH THE 

CANONICAL AND THE APOCRYPHAL, 
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(NEW TESTAMENT,) 

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 



By PROF. CALVIN E. STOWE, D. D., 

FOR MORE THAN THIRTY TEARS BIBLICAL PROFESSOR AT ANDOVER, CINCINNATI, 

AND OTHER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARIES, AND ACKNOWLEDGED 

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four Gospels. 

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Modern substitutes for the Gospel History, with an examination of the works of 
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The Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament, and the reason for their exclusion 
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